
Class _ES_3j_S2. 
Tc\6o 



Book 



^J-UJ^) 



In the IVilderness. 



CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER, 

AUTHOR OF "my SUMMER IN A GARDEN," "BACKLOG STUDIES,' 
" SAUNTERINGS," ETC. 




\ y> • \ :> 



' \. ', •> . > 



BOSTON: 
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY. 



.16 



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Copyright, 1878, 
BY CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER, 



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, .TJWEW f yj ^OJJRJH IMPRESSION 






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T^ Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. 5. A* 
Printed by H. O. Houghton & Company. 



OOJSTTENTS. 



EN THE WILDERNESS. 

L How I KILLED A BeAB 5 

n. Lost in the Woods • « • . 21 

III. A Fight with a Trout . • • • . 41 

IV. A-HuKcrrNG op the Deeb • • • • 54 
V. A Chakacteb Study 82 

VI. Camping Out ,124 

VII. A Wilderness Romance 147 

VITI. What Some People call Pleasure . . 168 

HOW SPRING CAME IN NEW ENGLAND . 197 

'74. How Spring came in New England By 

a Readeb of " '93' 199 

3 




IN THE WILDEEIsrESS. 
I. 

HOW I KILLED A BEAR. 

O many conflicting accounts have ap- 
peared about m}" casual encounter with 
an Adirondack bear last summer, that 
in justice to the public, to myself, and to the 
bear, it is necessary to make a plain statement 
of the facts. Besides, it is so seldom I have 
occasion to kill a bear, that the celebration of 
the exploit may be excused. 

The encounter was unpremeditated on both 
sides. I was not hunting for a bear, and I 
have no reason to suppose that a bear was look- 
ing for me. The fact is, that we were both out 
blackberr^ing, and met by chance, — the usual 
way. There is among the Adirondack visitors 



IN THE WILDERNESS. 



always a great deal of conversation about bears, 
— a general expression of the wish to see one in 
the woods, and much speculation as to how a 
person would act if he or she chanced to meet 
one. But bears are scarce and timid, and ap- 
pear only to a favored few. 

It was a warm day in August, just the sort 
of day when an adventure of any kind seemed 
impossible. But it occurred to the housekeepers 
at our cottage — there were four of them — to 
send me to the clearing, on the mountain back 
of the house, to pick blackberries. It was rather 
a series of small clearings, running up into the 
forest, much overgrown with bushes and briers, 
and not unromantic. Cows pastured there, pene- 
trating tlirough the leafy passages from one open- 
ing to another, and browsing among the bushes. 
I was kindly furnished with a six-quart pail, and 
told not to be gone long. 

Not from any predatory instinct, but to save 
appearances, I took a gun. It adds to the manly 
aspect of a person with a tin paU if he also 
parries a gun. It was possible I might start up a 



BOW I KILLED A BEAR. 



partridge ; though how I was to hit him, if he 
started up instead of standing still, puzzled me. 
Many people use a shot-gun for partridges. 1 
prefer the rifle : it makes a clean job of death, 
and does not prematurely stuff the bird with 
globules of lead. The rifle was a Sharp's, carry- 
ing a ball cartridge (ten to the pound), — an ex- 
cellent weapon belonging to a friend of mine, 
who had intended, for a good many years back, 
to kill a deer with it. He could hit a tree with it 

— if the wind did not blow, and the atmosphere 
was just right, and the tree was not too far off 

— nearly every time. Of course, the tree must 
have some size. Needless to say that I was at 
that time no sportsman. Years ago I killed a 
robin under the most humiliating circumstances. 
The bird was in a low cherry-tree. I loaded a 
big shot-gun pretty full, crept up under the tree, 
rested the gun on the fence, with the muzzle 
more than ten feet from the bu'd, shut both eyes, 
and pulled the trigger. When I got up to see 
what had happened, the robin was scattered about 
under the tree in more than a thousand piecea 



IN TEE WILDERNESS. 



no one of which was big enough to enable a 
naturalist to decide from it to what species ift 
belonged. This disgusted me with the life of a 
sportsman. I mention the incident to show, that, 
although I went blackberrying armed, there was 
not much inequahty between me and the bear. 

In this blackberry-patch bears had been seen. 
The summer before, our colored cook, accom- 
panied by a little girl of the vicinage, was pick- 
ing berries there one day, when a bear came out 
of the woods, and walked towards them. The 
girl took to her heels, and escaped. Aunt Chloe 
was paralyzed with terror. Instead of attempt- 
ing to run, she sat down on the ground where 
she was standing, and began to weep and scream, 
giving herself up for lost. The bear was bewil- 
dered by this conduct. He approached and 
looked at her; he walked around and surveyed 
her. Probably he had never seen a colored per- 
son before, and did not know whether she would 
agree with him : at any rate, after watching her f 
ft w moments, he turned about, and went into the 
Coiest. This is an authentic mstance of the deli 



HOW I KILLED A BEAR. 



cate consideration of a bear, and is much more 
remarkable than the forbearance towards the 
African slave of the well-known lion, because the 
bear had no thorn in his foot. 

When I had climbed the hill, I set up my rifle 
against a tree, and began picking berries, lured 
on from bush to bush by the black gleam of fruit 
(that always promises more in the distance than 
it reahzes when you reach it) ; penetrating farther 
and farther, through leaf-shaded cow-paths flecked 
with sunlight, into clearing after clearing. I 
could hear on all sides the tinkle of bells, the 
cracking of sticks, and the stamping of cattle 
that were taking refuge in the thicket from the 
flies. Occasionally, as I broke through a covert, 
I encountered a meek cow, who stared at me 
stupidly for a second, and then shambled ofl" into 
the brush. I became accustomed to this dumb 
society, and picked on in silence, attributing all 
the wood-noises to the cattle, thinking nothing 
vf any real bear. In point of fact, however, I 
was thinking all the time of a nice romantic bear, 
and as I picKed, was composing a story about a 



10 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

generous she-bear who had lost her cub, and who 
seized a small girl in this very wood, carried hei 
tenderly off to a cave, and brought her up on 
bear's milk and hone3\ When the gii'l got big 
enough to run away, moved by her inherited in- 
stincts, she escaped, and came into the valley to 
her father's house (this part of the story was to 
be worked out, so that the child would know her 
father by some family resemblance, and have 
some language in which to address him), and 
told him where the bear lived. The father took 
his gun, and, guided by the unfeehng daughter, 
went into the woods and shot the bear, who 
never made any resistance, and only, when djing, 
turned reproachful e}' es upon her murderer. The 
moral of the tale was to be kindness to animals. 

I was in the midst of this tale, when I hap- 
pened to look some rods away to the other edge 
^f the clearing, and there was a bear ! He W88 
standing on his hind-legs, and doing just what I 
T7as doing, — picking blackberries. With one 
paw he bent down the bush, while with the other 
Ue clawed the berries into his mouth, — greet 



HOW I KILLED A BEAR. U 

ones and all. To say that I was astonished ia 
inside the mark. I suddenly discovered that I 
didn't want to see a bear, after all. At about 
the same moment the bear saw me, stopped eat- 
ing berries, and regarded me with a glad sur- 
prise. It is all very well to imagine what you 
would do under such circumstances. Probably 
you wouldn't do it : I didn't. The bear dropped 
down on his fore-feet, and came slowly towards 
me. Climbing a tree was of no use, with so 
good a climber in the rear. K I started to run, 
I had no doubt the bear would give chase ; and 
although a bear cannot iTin down hill as fast as 
he can run up hill, yet I felt that he could get 
over this rough, brush-tangled ground faster than 
I could. 

The bear was approaching. It suddenly oc- 
curred to me how I could divert his mind until I 
could fall back upon my military base. My paU 
was nearly full of excellent b>3rries, — much better 
than the bear could pick himself. I put the pai, 
on the ground, and slowly backed away from it, 
keeping my eye, as beast-tamers do, on the bear 
The ruse succeeded. 



12 IN THE WILDERNESS . 

The bear came up to the berries, and stopped 
Not a(}custoined to eat out of a pail, he tipped \% 
over, and nosed about in the fruit, "gorming** 
(if there is such a word) it down, mixed with 
leaves and dirt, like a pig. The bear is a worse 
feeder than the pig. Whenever he disturbs a 
maple- sugar camp in the spring, he alwaj^s upsets 
the buckets of sirup, and tramples round in the 
sticky sweets, wasting more than he eats. The 
bear's manners are thoroughly disagreeable. 

As soon as my enemy's head was down, I 
started and ran. Somewhat out of breath, and 
shaky, I reached my faithful rifle. It was not a 
moment too soon. I heard the bear crashing 
through the brush after me. Enraged at my 
duplicity, he was now coming on with blood in his 
eye. I felt that the time of one of us was 
probably short. The rapidity of thought at such 
moments of peril is well known. I thought an 
octavo volume, had it illustrated and pubhshed, 
sold fifty thousand copies, and went to Europe 
on the proceeds, while that bear was loping acrosi 
^e clearing. As I was cocking the gun, T made 



I 



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IN THE WILDERNESS. " Little Classic " style. iSmo, 

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now I KILLED A BEAK. IS 



B hasty and unsatisfactory review of my whole 
life. I noted, that, even in such a compulsory 
review, it is almost impossible to think of any 
good thing you have done. The sins come out 
uncommonly strong. I recollected a newspape 
subscription I had delayed paying years £nd 
years ago, until both editor and newspaper were 
dead, and which now never could be paid to all 
fternity. 

The bear was coming on. 

I tried to remember what I had read about 
encounters with bears. I couldn't recall an in- 
stance in which a man had run away from a bear 
in the woods and escaped, although I recalled 
plenty where the bear had run from the man and 
got off. I tried to think what is the best way to 
kill a bear with a gun, when you are not near 
enough to club him with the stock. My first 
thought was to fire at his head ; to plant the ball 
between his eyes : but this is a dangerous experi- 
ment. The bear's brain is very small : and, un 
ess you hit that, the bear does not mind a bulle^ 
H his head ; tJ\at is, not at the time. I remem* 



14 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

oered that the instant death of the bear would 
follow a bullet planted just back of his fore-leg, 
and sent into his heart. This spot is also diffi- 
cult to reach, unless the bear stands off, side 
towards you, like a target. I finally determined 
to fii-e at him generally. 

The bear was coming on. 

The contest seemed to me very different from 
any thing at Creedmoor. I had carefully read the 
reports of the shooting there ; but it was not easy 
to apply the experience I had thus acquired. I 
hesitated whether I had better fire lying on my 
stomach ; or l}ing on my back, and resting the gun 
on my toes. But in neither position, I reflected, 
could I see the bear until he was upon me. The 
range was too short ; and the bear wouldn't wait 
for me to examine the thermometer, and note the 
directicn of the wind. Trial of the Creedmooi 
method J therefore, had to be abandoned; and 1 
bitterly regretted that I had not read more ac- 
counts of offhand shooting. 

For the bear was coming on. 

1 tiled to fix my last thoughts uj)on my family 



EOW I KILLED A BEAU. 15 

A-s ray family is small, this was not difficult. 
Dread of displeasing my wife, or hurting her 
feelings, was uppermost in my mind. What 
would be her anxiety as hour after hour passed 
on, and I did not return ! What would the rest of 
the household think as the afternoon passed, and 
flo blackberries came ! What would be m}^ wife's 
mortification when the news was brought that her 
husband had been eaten by a bear ! I cannot 
imagine any thing more ignominious than to have 
a husband eaten by a bear. And this was not 
my onl}^ anxiety. The mind at such times is not 
under control. With the gravest fears the most 
whimsical ideas will occur. I looked beyond the 
mourning friends, and thought what kind of an 
epitaph they would be compelled to put upon the 
itone. Something like this : — 

HERE LIE THE REMAINS 
OF 



EATEN BY A BEAR 

Aug. 20, }877. 
It 18 a very unheroic and ev?n disagreeable 



16 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

epitapb. That " eaten by a bear " is intolerable. 
It is grotesque. And then I thought what an 
inadequate language the English is for compact 
expression. It would not answer to put upon the 
stone simply " eaten ; " for that is indefinite, and 
requires explanation : it might mean eaten by a 
cannibal. This difficulty could not occur in the 
German, where essen signifies the act of feeding 
by a man, and fressen by a beast. How simple 
the thing would be in German ! — 

HIER LIEGT 
HOCHWOHLGEBOREN 



GEFRESSEN 

Aug. 20, 1877. 

That explains itself. The well-born one wiS 
eaten by a beast, and presumably by a bear, — 
an animal that has a bad reputation since the 
dsLjH of Elisha. 

The bear was coming on ; he had, m tact, come 
on. I judged that he could see the whites of wx 
eyes. All mj^ subsequent reflections were eon* 
tnsuid, I raised the gun, covered the bcar'i 



HOW I KILLED A BEA.^. 17 

oreast with the sight, and let drive. Then I 
turned, and ran like a deer. I did not hear the 
bear pursuing. I looked back. The bear had 
kJtopped. He was lying down. I then remem- 
bered that the best thing to do after having fiied 
yoiu- gun is to reload it. I slipped in a charge, 
keeping my eyes on the bear. He never stirred.. 
X walked back suspiciously. There was a quiver 
in the hind-legs, but no other motion. Still he 
might be shamming: bears often sham. To 
make sure, I approached, and put a ball into his 
head. He didn't mind it now : he minded noth- 
ing. Death had come to him with a merciful 
suddenness. He was calm in death. In order 
that he might remain so, I blew his brains out, 
and then started for home. I had killed a bear ! 

Notivithsta-^ding my excitement, I managed to 
eauntei Into the house with an unconcerned air. 
There was a chorus of voices : — 

'' Where are your blackberries? *' 

*' Why were you gone so long? " 

" Where's your pail? " 

"I left the pail.*' 



18 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

"Left the pail? What for?" 

" A bear wanted it.'' 

'*0h, nonsense! '* 

*' Well, the last I saw of it, a bear had it." 

" Oh, come ! You didn't really see a bear? '' 

'* Yes, but I did reaUy see a real bear." 

'* Did he run?" 

'* Yes : he ran after me." 

*' I don't believe a word of it. What did you 
dc?" 

*'0h! nothing particular — except kill the 
Dear." 

Cries of "Gammon!" "Don't believe it!" 
"Where's the bear?" 

"If you want to see the bear, you must go 
jp into the woods. I couldn't bring him down 
alone." 

Having satisfied the household that something 
extraordinary had occurred, and excited the post- 
humous fear of some of them for my own safety, 
I went down into the valley to get help. The 
great beai -hunter, who keeps one of the summer 
boarding-houses, received my story with a smilf 



HOW I KILLED A BEAR. 19 

of incredulity ; and the incredulity spread to the 
lather inhabitants and to the boarders as soon as 
the story was known. However, as I insisted in 
all soberness, and offered to lead them to the 
bear, a party of forty or fifty people at last 
started off with me to bring the bear in. No- 
body believed there was any bear in the case ; but 
everybody who could get a gun carried one ; and 
we went into the woods armed with guns, pistols, 
pitcnforks, and sticks, against all contingencies 
or surprises, — a crowd made up mostly of scoff- 
ers and jeerers. 

But when I led the way to the fatal spot, and 
pointed out the bear, Ij^ng peacefully wrapped 
in his own skin, something lilie terror seized the 
boarders, and genuine excitement the natives. 
It was a no-mistake bear, by George ! and the 
hero of the fight — well, I will not insist upon 
that. But what a procession that was, carrjing 
the bear home ! and what a congregation was 
speedily gathere^I in the valley to see the bear ! 
Our best preacher up there uever drew any thing 
tike it on Sunday. 



20 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

And I must say that my particular friends, who 
Vsrere sportsmen, behaved very well, on the whole. 
The}' didn't deny that it was a bear, although 
they said it was small for a bear. Mr. Deane, 
who is equall}' good with a rifle and a rod, admit- 
ted that it was a very fair shot. He is probably 
the best salmon-fisher in the United States, and 
he is an equally good hunter. I suppose there is 
no person in America who is more desirous to 
kill a moose than he. But he needlessl}^ re- 
marked, after he had examined the wound in the 
bear, that he had seen that kind of a shot made 
by a cow's horn. 

This sort of talk affected me not. When 1 
Ivent to sleep that night, my last delicious thought 
rasj *' I've killed a bear ! " 




II. 



LOST IN THE WOODS. 




T ought to be said, by way of explana- 
tion, that my being lost in the wooda 
was not premeditated. Nothing could 
have been more informal. This apolog}^ can be 
necessary only to those who are familiar with the 
Adirondack literature. Any person not familiar 
with it would see the absurdity of one going to 
the Northern Wilderness with the deliberate pur- 
pose of writing about himself as a lost man. It 
may be true, that a book about this wild tract 
would not be recognized as complete without a 
^st-man story in it ; since it is almost as easy 
for a stranger to get lost in the Adirondacks as 
in Boston. I merely desire to sa}^ that my 
ttnimporfjant adventure is not narrated in answer 

21 



22 IN THE WILDERNESS. 



to the popular demand, and I do not wish to be 
held responsible for its variation from the t}T3ica 
character of such experiences. 

We had been in camp a week, on the Upper 
Ausable Lake. This is a gem — emerald or tur- 
quoise as the light changes it — set in the virgin 
forest. It is not a large body of water, is ir- 
regulai in form, and about a mile and a half in 
length ; but in the sweep of its wooded shores, 
and the lovely contour of the lofty mountains 
that guard it, the lake is probably the most 
charming in America. Why the young ladies 
and gentlemen who camp there occasionally vex 
the days and nights with hooting, and singing 
sentimental songs, is a mystery even to the 
laughing loon. 

I left my companions there one Saturday 
morning, to return to Keene Valley, intending to 
fish down the Ausable River. The Upper Lake 
discharges itself into the Lower by a brook 
which winds through a mile and a half of swamp 
and woods. Out of the north end of the Lower 
Lake, whi3h is a huge sink in the mountains, and 



LOST IN THE WOODS. 23 



mirrors the savage precipices, the Ausable breaks 
its rocky barriers, and flows through a wiki 
gorge, several miles, to the valley below. Be- 
tween the Lower Lake and the settlements is 
Rn extensive forest, traversed by a cart-path, 
admirably constructed of loose stones, roots of 
trees, decayed logs, slippery rocks, and mud. 
The gorge of the river forms its western bound a 
ry. I followed this caricature of a road a mile 
or more ; then gave my luggage to the guide to 
carry home, and struck off through the forest, by 
compass, to the river. I promised myself an 
exciting scramble down this httle-frequented 
canon, and a creel full of trout. There was no 
difficulty in finding the river, or in descending 
the steep precipice to its bed : getting into a 
scrape is usually the easiest part of it. The 
river is strewn with bowlders, big and little, 
through which the amber water rushes with an 
unceasing thunderous roar, now plunging down 
in white falls, then swirhng round in dark pools. 
The day, already past meridian, was delightful ; 
U least the blue strip of it T could see overhead 



24 IN THE WILhERNESS. 



Better pools and rapids for trout never were, 1 

thought, as I concealed myself behind a bowlder, 
find made the first cast. There is nothing like 
the thiill of expectation over the first throw in 
unfamiliar waters. Fishing is like gambling, in 
that failure only excites hope of a fortuiiate 
throw next time. There was no rise to the 
"leader" on the first cast, nor on the twenty- 
fii-st ; and I cautiously worked my way down 
stream, throwing right and left. When I had 
gone half a mile, my opinion of the character of 
the pools was unchanged : never were there such 
places for trout ; but the trout were out of their 
places. Perhaps they didn't care for the fly: 
some trout seem to be so unsophisticated as to 
prefer the worm. I replaced the fly with a baited 
hook : the worm squirmed ; the waters rushed 
and roared ; a cloud sailed across the blue : no 
trout rose to the lonesome opportunity. There 
IS a certain companionship in the presence of 
trout, especially when you can feel them flopping 
in your fish-basket; but it became evident that 
tticie were no trout in this wilderness, and s 



LOST IK THE WOODS. 25 

Bense of isolation for the first time came over me 
There was no living thing near. The river ha«.1 
by this time entered a deeper gorge ; walls ol 
rocks rose perpendicularly on either side, — pic 
turesque rocks, painted many colors by the oxido 
of iron. It was not possible to climb out of the 
gorge ; it was impossible to find a way by the 
side of the river; and getting dowfi the bed, 
over the falls, and through the flumes, was not 
easy, and consumed time. 

Was that thunder ? Very likely. But thunder- 
showers are always brewing in these mountain- 
fortresses, and it did not occur to me that there 
was any thing personal in it. Very soon, how- 
ever, the hole in the sky closed in, and the rain 
dashed down. It seemed a providential time to 
eat my luncheon ; and I took shelter under a 
scraggy pine that had rooted itself in the edge of 
the rocky slope. The shower soon passed, and I 
continued my journey, creeping over the slippery 
rocks, and continuing to show my confidence in 
the unresponsive trout. The way grew wilder 
Rnd more grewsome. The thunder began again, 



^6 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

rolling along over the tops of the mountains, and 
reverberating in sharp concussions in the gorge : 
the lightning also darted down into the darkening 
passage, and then the rain. Every enlightened 
being, even if he is in a fisherman's dress of shirt 
and pantaloons, hates to get wet ; and I ignomin 
iously crept under the edge of a sloping bowlder. 
It was all very well at fii'st, until streams of water 
began to crawl along the face of the rock, and 
trickle down the back of my neck. This was re- 
fined misery, unheroic and humiliating, as suffer- 
ing always is when unaccompanied by resignation. 
A longer time than I knew was consumed in 
this and repeated efforts to wait for the slacken- 
ing and renewing storm to pass away. In the 
intervals of calm I still fished, and even de- 
scended to what a sportsman considers incredible 
baseness: I put a "sinker'' on my line. It la 
the practice of the country-folk, whose only 
object is to get fish, to use a good deal of bait, 
sink the hook to the bottom of the pools, and 
wait the slow appetite of the summer trout. I 
tiieil this also. I might as well have fished in i 



LOST IN THE WOODS. 27 



pork-barrel. It is true, that, in one deep, black, 
round pool, I lured a small trout from the bottom, 
and deposited him in the creel; but it was an 
accident. Though I sat there in the awful silence 
(the roar of water and thunder only emphasized 
the stillness) full half an hour, I was not en- 
tom'aged by another nibble. Hope, however, did 
not die : I always expected to find the trout in 
the next flume ; and so I toiled slowly on, uncon- 
scious of the passing time. At each turn of the 
stream I expected to see the end, and at each 
turn I saw a long, narrow stretch of rocks and 
foaming water. Climbing out of the ravine was, 
in most places, simply impossible ; and I began to 
look with interest for a shde, where bushes rooted 
in the scant earth would enable me to scale the 
precipice. I did not doubt that I was nearly 
through the gorge. I could at length see the 
huge form of the Giant of the Valley, scarred 
with avalanches, at the end of the vista ; and it 
seemed not far off. But it kept its distance, aa 
onlj- a mountain can, while I stumbkid and sUd 
down the rocky way. The rain had now set iv 



is IN THE WILDERNESS. 

« 

with persistence, and suddenly I became aware 
that it was growing dark ; and I said to m3"self, 
" If you don't wish to spend the night in this hor- 
rible chasm, you'd better escape speedil3\" For- 
tunately I reached a place where the face of the 
precipice was bush-grown, and with considerable 
labor scrambled up it. 

Having no doubt that I was within half a mile, 
perhaps within a few rods, of the house above 
the entrance of the gorge, and that, in any event, 
I should fall into the cart-path in a few minutes, 
I struck boldly into the forest, congi-atulating 
myself on having escaped out of the river. So 
sure was I of my whereabouts, that I did not 
note the bend of the river, nor look at my com- 
pass. The one trout in my basket was no burden, 
and I stepped lightly out. 

The forest was of hard- wood, and open, except 
for a thick undergrowth of moose-bush. It was 
raining, — in fact, it had been raining, more or 
less, for a month, — and the woods were soaked, 
This moose-ljush is most annoying stuff to travel 
khrougji in a rain ; for the broad leaves slap ont 



LOST IN TEE WOODS. 29 

^— ' 

■n the face, and sop him with wet. The way 
prew every moment more dingy. The heavy 
clouds above the thick fohage brought night on 
prematurely. It was decidedly premature to a 
near-sighted man, whose glasses the rain rendered 
useless : such a person ought to be at home 
early. On leaving the river-bank I had borne 
to the left, so as to be sure to strike either the 
clearing or the road, and not wander off into the 
measureless forest. I confidently pursued this, 
course, and went gayly on by the left flank. 
That I did not come to any opening or path, only 
showed that I had shghtly mistaken the distance : 
I was going in the right direction. 

I was so certain of this, that I quickened my 
pace, and got up with alacrity every time I tima- 
bled down amid the shppery leaves and catch- 
ing roots, and hurried on. And I kept to the 
left. It even occurred to me that I was turning 
to the left so much, that I might come back to 
the river again. It grew more dusky, and rained 
more violently ; but there was nothing alarming 
^ the situation, since I knew exactly wheie I 



30 IN THE WILDERNESS, 

w^as. It was a little mortifjdng that I had miS" 
calculated the distance : yet, so far was I from 
feehng any uneasiness about this, that I quick- 
ened my pace again, and, before I knew it, was 
in a full run ; that is, as full a run as a person 
can indulge in in the dusk, with so many trees in 
the way. No nervousness, but simply a reason- 
able desire to get there. I desired to look upon 
myself as the person " not lost, but gone before." 
As time passed, and darkness fell, and no clear- 
ing or road appeared, I ran a little faster. It 
didn't seem possible that the people had moved, 
or the road been changed ; and yet I was sure of 
my direction. I went on with an energy in- 
creased by the ridiculousness of the situation, the 
danger that an experienced woodsman was in 
of getting home late for supper ; the lateness of 
the meal being nothing to the gibes of the un- 
lost. How long I kept this course, and how far 
1 went on, I do not know ; but suddenly I 
Btumbled against an ill-placed tree, and sat down 
on tlie soaked ground, a tiifle out of breath. It 
then occurred to me that I had better verify my 



LOST IN THE WOODS. 31 

course by the compass. There was scarcety light 
enough to distinguish the black end of the needle. 
To my amazement, the compass, which was made 
near Greenwich, was wrong. Allowing for the 
natural variation of the needle, it was absurdly 
wrong. It made out that I was going south 
when I was going north. It intimated, that, in- 
stead of turning to the left, I had been making 
a circuit to the right. According to the compass, 
the Lord only knew where I was. 

The inchnation of persons in the woods to 
travel in a ckcle is unexplained. I suppose it 
arises from the sympathy of the legs with the 
brain. Most people reason in a circle : their 
minds go round and round, always in the same 
track. For the last half-hour I had been saying 
over a sentence that started itself: "I wonder 
where that road is ! " I had said it over till it 
had lost all meaning. I kept going round on it ; 
and yet I could not believe that my body had 
been travelling in a circle. Not being able to 
recognize any tracks, I have no evidence that I 
had so travelled, except *^he general tastimony of 
lost men. 



32 IN TEE WILDERNESS. 

The compass annoyed me. I've known ex* 
pirrienced guides utterly discredit it. It couldn't 
be that I was to turn about, and go the way T 
had come. Nevertheless, I said to mjself^ 
'' You'd better keep a cool head, my boy, or you 
are in for a night of it. Better listen to science 
than to spunk." And I resolved to heed the 
impartial needle. I was a little weary of the 
rough tramping : but it was necessary to be mov- 
ing; for, with wet clothes and the night air, I 
was decidedly chilly. I turned towards the north, 
and shpped and stumbled along. A more un- 
inviting forest to pass the night in I never saw. 
Every thing was soaked. If I became exhausted, 
it would be necessary to build a fire ; and, as I 
wallied on, I couldn't find a dry bit of wood. 
Even if a little punk were discovered in a rotten 
log, I had no hatchet to cut fuel. I thought it 
all over calmly. I had the usual three matches 
in my pocket. I knew exactly what would hap- 
pen if I tried to build a fii-e. The first match 
would prove to be wet. The second match, when 
struck, would shine and smell, and fizz a little 



LOST IN THE WOODS. 33 



and then go out. There would be only one 
match left. Death would ensue if it failed. 7 
should get close to the log, crawl under m}^ hat, 
strike the match, see it catch, flicker, almost go 
out (the reader painfully excited by this time) , 
blaze up, nearly expire, and finally fire the punk, 
— thank God! And I said to myself, "The 
public don't want any more of this thing : it is 
played out. Either have a box of matches, or 
let the first one catch fire." 

In this gloomy mood I plunged along. The 
prospect was cheerless ; for, apart from the com- 
fort that a fire would give, it is necessary, at 
night, to keep off the wild beasts. I fancied I 
could hear the tread of the stealthy brutes fol- 
lowing their prey. But there was one source of 
profound satisfaction, — the catamount had been 
killed. Mr. Colvin, the triangulating surveyor 
of tlie Adirondacks, killed him in his last official 
report to the State. Whether he despatched him 
with a theodolite or a barometer does not mat- 
ter : he is officially dead, and none of the travel- 
leis can kill him any more. Yet he has serv#w1 
shem a good turn 



54 IN THE WILDERNESS. 



I knew that catamount well. One night when 
WG lay in the bogs of the South Beaver Meadow, 
under a canopy of mosquitoes, the sereae mid- 
night was parted by a wild and human-like cry 
from a neighboring mountain. ^' That's a cat/ 
said the guide. I felt in a moment that it was 
the voice of " modern cultchah." "Modern cul- 
ture," says Mr. Joseph Cook in a most impres- 
sive period, — " modern culture is a child crying 
in the wilderness, and with no voice but a cry." 
That describes the catamount exactly. The 
next da}", when we ascended the mountain, we 
came upon the traces of this brute, — a spot 
where he had stood and cried in the night ; and I 
confess that my hair rose with the consciousness 
of his recent presence, as it is said to do when u 
spirit passes by. 

Whatever consolation the absence of cats 
mount in a dark, drenched, and howhng wilder- 
ness can impart, that I experienced ; but I 
thought what a satire upon my present condition 
was modern culture, with its plain thinking and 
high li\ing ! It was impossible to get much sat 



LOST IN THE WOODS. 35 

isfaction out of the real and the ideal, — the me 
Rnd the not-me. At this time what impressed 
me most was the absurdity of mj position 
k)oked at in the light of modern civilization and 
all my advantages and acquirements. It seemed 
pilifiil that society could do absolutely nothing 
for me. It was, in fact, humiliating to reflect that 
it would now be profitable to exchange all my 
possessions for the woods instinct of the most 
unlettered guide. I began to doubt the value of 
the '^ culture " that blunts the natural instincts. 

It began to be a question whether I could hold 
out to walli all night ; for I must travel, or perish. 
And now I imagined that a spectre was walking 
by my side. This was Famine. To be sure, I 
had only recently eaten a hearty luncheon : but 
the pangs of hunger got hold on me when I 
thought that I should have no supper, no break- 
fast ; and, as the procession of unattainable meals 
stretched before me, I grew hungrier and hun- 
grier. I could feel that I was becoming gaunt, 
and wasting awa}^ : already I seemed to be ema- 
nated. It is astonishing how speedily a jocund, 



56 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

well- conditioned human being can be trans 
formed into a spectacle of poverty and want 
Lose a man in the woods, drench him, tear his 
pantaloons, get Ms imagination running on his 
lost supper and the cheerful fireside that is ex- 
pecting him, and he wiU become haggard in an 
hour. I am not dwelling upon these things tc 
excite the reader's sjTnpathy, but onty to advise 
him, if he contemplates an adventure of this 
kind, to provide himself with matches, kindling- 
wood, something more to eat than one raw trout, 
and not to select a rainy night for it. 

Nature is so pitiless, so unresponsive, to a per- 
son in trouble ! I had read of the soothing com- 
panionship of the forest, the pleasure of the 
pathless woods. But I thought, as I stumbled 
along in the dismal actuaht}^, that, if I ever got 
out of it, I would write a letter to the news- 
papers, exposing the whole thing. Theie is an 
impassive, stolid brutality about the woods, tiiat 
has never been enough insisted on. I tried to 
keep my mind fixed upon the fact of man's £Ur 
periority to Nature ; his ability to dominate and 



LOST IN THE WOODS. 



outwit her. My situation was an amusing satire 
on this theory. I fancied that I coi Jd feel a sneer 
in the woods at my detected conceit. There was 
something personal in it. The downpour of tlie 
rain and the shpperiness of the ground were ele- 
ments of discomfort ; but there was, beside? 
these, a kind of terror in the very character of 
the forest itself. I think this arose not more 
from its immensitj^ than from the kind of stolidity 
to which I have alluded. It seemed to me that 
it would be a sort of rehef to kick the trees. I 
don't wonder that the bears fall to, occasionally, 
And scratch the bark off the great pines and 
maples, tearing it angrily away. One must have 
some vent to his feelings. It is a common expe- 
rience of people lost in the woods to lose their 
heads ; and even the woodsmen themselves are 
not tree from this panic when some accident hag 
thrown them out of their reckoning. Fright un- 
settles the judgment: the oppressive silence of 
the woods is a vacuum in which the mind goes 
Rstray. It's a hoUow sham, this pantheism, J 
Bdd ; being " one with Nature "' is all himabug: 



58 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

I should like to see somebod}^ Man, to be sure, 
Is of very little account, and soon gets be^'ond his 
depth ; but the society of the least human being 
is better than this gigantic indifference. The 
*' rapture on the lonely shore " is agreeable only 
when you know 3^ou can at any moment go home. 
I liad now given up aU expectation of finding 
the road, and was steering my way as well as I 
could northward towards the valley. In my haste 
I made slow progress. Probably the distance I 
travelled was short, and the time consumed not 
long ; but I seemed to be adding mile to mile, and 
hour to hour. I had time to re\iew the incidents 
of the Russo-Turkish war, and to forecast the 
entire Eastern question ; I outhned the characters 
of all my companions left in camp, and sketched 
in a sort of comedy the sympathetic and dispar- 
aging observations they would make on my ad- 
venture ; I repeated something like a thousand 
times, without contradiction, "What a fool yon 
were to lea/e the river ! " I stopped twenty times, 
thinking I heard its loud roar, always deceive*? 
by the wind in the tree-tops ; I began to enter 



LOST IN THE WOODS. 39 

tain serious doubts about the compass, — when 
suddenly I became aware that I was no longer on 
level ground : I was descending a slope ; I was 
iiotually in a ravine. In a moment more I was 
in a brook newly formed by the rain. " Thank 
Heaven ! '* I cried : " this I shall follow, whatevc" 
conscience or the compass saj^s." In this region, 
all streams go, sooner or later, into the valle3^ 
This ravine, this stream, no doubt, led to the 
river. I splashed and tumbled along down it in 
mud and water. Down hill we went together, the 
fall showing that I must have wandered to high 
ground. When I guessed that I must be close to 
the river, I suddenly stepj^ed into mud up to my 
ankles. It was the road, — running, of course, 
the wrong way, but still the blessed road. It 
was a mere canal of liquid mud ; but man had 
made it, and it would take me home. I was at 
least three miles from the point I supposed I was 
near at sunset, and I had before me a toilsome 
rralli of six or seven miles, most of the way in a 
ditch ; but it is truth to say that I enjoyed every 
step of it. I was safe ; I knew where I was ; and 



40 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

I could have walked till morning. The mind had 
again got the upper hand of the body, and began 
to plume itself on its superiority : it was even 
disposed to doubt whether it had been ''lost" 
ataU. 




III. 



A FIGHT WITH A TROUT. 



ROUT-FISHING in the Adirondacks 
would be a more attractive pastime than 
it is, but for the popular notion of its 
danger. The trout is a retiring and harmless 
animal, except when he is aroused, and forced 
into a combat ; and then his agility, fierceness, 
and vindictiveness become apparent. No one 
who has studied the excellent pictures represent- 
ing men in an open boat, exposed to the assaults 
of long, enraged trout flying at them through the 
open air with open mouth, ever ventures with his 
rod upon the lonely lakes of the forest without a 
certain terror, or ever reads of the exploits of 
daring fishermen without a feeling of admiration 
for their heroism. Most of then- adventures are 

41 



42 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

thi'illing, and all of them are, in narration, more 
or less unjust to the trout : in fact, the object of 
them seems to be to exhibit, at the expense of 
the trout, the shrewdness, the skill, and the mus- 
c\ilar power of the sportsman. My own simple 
Btory has few of these recommendations. 

We had built our bark camp one summer, and 
were staging on one of the popular lakes of the 
Saranac region. It would be a veiy pretty re- 
gion if it were not so flat, if the margins of 
the lakes had not been flooded b}" dams at the 
outlets, — which have killed the trees, and left a 
rim of ghastly dead-wood like the 6wamps of 
the under-world pictured by Dore^s bizaiTe pen- 
cil, — and if the pianos at the hotels were in tune. 
It would be an excellent sporting-region also (for 
there is water enough) if the fish commissioners 
would stock the waters, and if pre^^ous hunter s 
had not pulled all the hair and skin off fi'om the 
deer's tails. Formerly sportsmen had a habit of 
catching the deer by the tails, and of being 
dragged in mere wantonness round and round 
Qie shores. It is well known, that, if j'ou seize 



A FIGHT WITH A TROUT. 43 



R deer by this " holt," the skin will slip off like 
the peel fi'om a banana. This reprehensible prac- 
tice was carried so far, that the traveller is now 
hourly pained by the sight of peeled-tail deer 
mournfully sneaking about the wood. 

We had been hearing, for weeks, of a smaia 
lake in the heart of the virgin forest, some ten 
miles from our camp, which was alive with trout, 
unsophisticated, hungry trout : the inlet to it was 
described as stiff with them. In my imagination 
I saw them lying there in ranks and rows, each 
a foot long, three tiers deep, a sohd mass. The 
lake had never been visited, except hj stray 
sable-hunters in the winter, and was known as 
the Unknown Pond. I determined to explore 
it ; fully expecting, however, that it would prove 
to be a delusion, as such mysterious haunts of 
the trout usually are. Confiding my purpose to 
liuke, we secretly made our preparations, and 
stole away from the shanty one morning at day 
break. Each of us canied a boat, a pair of 
?:lankets, a sack of bread, pork, and maple- 
Bugar ; while I had my case of rods, creel, and 



U IN THE WILDERNESS. 

book of flies, and Luke had an axe and the 
kitchen utensils. We think nothing of loads of 
this sort in the woods. 

Five miles through a tamarack-swamp brought 
us to the inlet of Unknown Pond, upon which 
we embarked our fleet, and paddled down its 
vagrant waters. They were at first sluggish, 
winding among triste fir-trees, but gradually 
developed a strong current. At the end of 
three miles a loud roar ahead warned us that 
we were approaching rapids, falls, and cascades. 
We paused. The danger was unknown. We 
had our choice of shouldering our loads and 
making a detour through the woods, or of 
*' shooting the rapids.** Naturally we chose the 
more dangerous course. Shooting the rapids 
has often been described, and I will not repeat 
the description here. It is needless to say that 
I drove my frail bark through the boihng rapids, 
over the successive water-falls, amid rocks and 
nclous eddies, and landed, half a mile below 
mth whitened hair and a boat half full of water : 
tnd that the guide was upset, and boat, contents, 
ftDd man were strewn along the shora 



A FIGHT WITH A TROUT. 45 

mi • — ■ < — I — — 

After this common experience we went quick .j* 
on om* journey, and, a couple of hours before 
sundown, reached the lake. If I live to my 
dying-day, I never shall forget its appearance. 
The lake is almost an exact circle, about a quar- 
ter of a mile in diameter. The forest about it 
Was untouched by axe, and unldlled by artificial 
flooding. The azure water had a perfect setting 
of evergreens, in which all the shades of tho 
fir, the balsam, the pine, and the spruce, were 
perfectly blended ; and at intervals on the shore 
in the emerald rim blazed the ruby of the car- 
dinal-flower. It was at once e\'id®nt that the 
unruffled waters had never been vexed by the 
keel of a boat. But what chiefly attracted my 
attention, and amused me, was the boiling of 
the water, the bubbling and breaking, as if the 
lake were a vast kettle, with a fire underneath, 
A t}TO would have been astonished at this com- 
mon phenomenon; but sportsmen will at once 
understand me when I say that the water boiled 
with the breaking trout. I studied the surface 
lor some time to see upon what sort of flies 



46 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

tliey were feeding, in order to suit my cast to 
their appetites ; buo they seemed to be at play 
rather than feeding, leaping high in the air in 
graceful curves, and tumbhng about each other 
as "we see them in the Adirondack pictures. 

]fc is well known that no person who regards 
Lis reputation will ever kill a trout with any 
thing but a fly. It requires some training on 
the part of the trout to take to this method. 
The uncultivated, unsophisticated trout in unfre- 
quented waters prefers the bait; and the rural 
people, whose sole object in going a-fishing ap- 
pears to be to catch fish, indulge them in their 
primitive taste for the worm. No sportsman, 
however, will use any thing but a fly, except 
he happens to be alone. 

While Luke launched my boat, and arranged 
his seat in the stern, I prepared my rod and 
line. The rod is a bamboo, weighing seven 
ounces, which has to be spliced with a winding 
of silk thi-ead every time it is used. This is a 
Vedious process ; but, by fastening the joints ir 
this way, a uniform spring is secured in the rod 



A FIGHT WITH A TROUT. 47 



No one devoted to high art would think of using 
a socket joint. My hue was forty yards of un- 
twisted sill? upon a multipljing reel. The "lead- 
er" (I am very particular about my leaders) 
had been made to order from a domestic animal 
with which I had been acquainted. The fisher- 
man requu-es as good a catgut as the vioUnist. 
The interior of the house-cat, it is well known, 
is exceedingly sensitive ; but it may not be so 
well known that the reason why some cats leave 
the room in distress when a piano-forte is played 
is because the two instruments are not in the 
same key, and the vibrations of the chords of the 
one are in discord with the catgut of the other. 
On six feet of this superior article I fixed three 
artificial flies, — a simple brown hackle, a gi'ay 
body with scarlet wings, and one of my own 
invention, which I thought would be new to the 
moat experienced fly-catcher. The trout-fly dona 
not resemble any known species of insect. It 
'is a "conventionalized" creation, as we say of 
Dmamentation. The theory is, that, fly-fishing 
being a high art, the flv must not be a tame 



48 IN THE WILDERNESS. 



Imitation of nature, but an artistic suggestion of 
it. It requires an artist to construct one ; and 
not every bungler can take a bit of red flannel, 
a f)eacock's feather, a flash of tinsel thread, a 
cock's plume, a section of a hen's wing, and 
fabricate a tiny object that will not look like 
any fly, but still will suggest the universal con* 
ventional ^y. 

I took my stand in the centre of the tipsy 
boat ; and Luke shoved off, and slowly paddled 
towards some lily-pads, while I began casting, 
unlimbering my tools, as it were. The fish had 
all disappeared. I got out, perhaps, fifty feet 
of line, with no response, and gradually in- 
creased it to one hundred. It is not difiScult to 
learn to cast ; but it is difficult to learn not to 
snap off the flies at every throw. Of this, how- 
ever, we will not speak. I continued casting for 
Bome moments, until I became satisfied that 
there had been a miscalculation. Either the 
trout were too green to know what I was at, ot 
they were dissatisfied with my offers. I reeled 
!n, and changed the flies (that is, the fly that wai 



A FIGHT WITH A TROUT. 4S 

not snapped off). After studjing the color of 
the sky, of the water, and of the fohage, and the 
moderated light of the afternoon, I put on a 
series of beguilers, all of a subdued brilliancy, 
in harmony with the approach of evening. At 
the second cast, which was a short one, I saw a 
splash where the leader fell, and gave an excited 
jerk. The next instant I perceived the game, 
and did not need the unfeigned " dam ** of Luke 
to convince me that I had snatched his felt hat 
from his head, and deposited it among the lilies. 
Discouraged by this, we whMed about, and pad- 
dled over to the inlet, where a little ripple was 
visible in the tinted light. At the very first cast 
I saw that the hour had come. Three trout 
Leaped into the air. The danger of this ma- 
aceu\Te all fishermen understand. It is one of 
Uie commonest in the woods : three heavy trout 
talring hold at once, rushing in different direc- 
tions, smash the tackle into flinders. I evaded 
this <^atch, and threw again. I recall the mo- 
nent, A hennit thrush, on the tip of a balsam. 
Uttered his long, hqoid, evening note. nappeD- 



50 m THE WILDERNESS. 

ing to look over my shoulder, I saw the peak of 
Marcy gleam ros}^ in the sky (I can't help it that 
Marcy is fifty miles off, and cannot be seen from 
this region : these incidental touches are always 
used) . The hundred feet of silk swished tlirough 
the air, and the tail-fly fell as lightly on the water 
as a three-cent-piece (which no slamming wil' 
give the weight of a ten) drops upon the contri- 
bution-plate. Instantly there was a rush, a 
swu'l. I struck, and " Got him, by — ! *' Never 
mind what Luke said I got him b}^ ' ' Out on a 
fly ! " continued that irreverent guide ; but I told 
him to back water, and make for the centre of 
the lake. The trout, as soon as he felt the prick 
of the hook, was off like a shot, and took out 
the whole of the line with a rapidity that made 
it smoke. " Give him the butt ! " shouted Luke. 
It is the usual remark in such an emergency. I 
gave him the butt ; and, recognizing the fact and 
my spirit, the trout at once sank to the bottom, 
and bulked. It is the most dangerous mood of $ 
Jrout ; for you cannot tell what he will do next 
We reeled up a little, and waited five minutes for 



A FIGHT WITH A TROUT. 51 

him to reflect. A tightening of the line enraged 
him, .'ind he soon developed his tactics. Coming 
to the siu-face, he made straight for the boat 
faster than I could reel in, and e^identl}^ with 
hostile intentions. " Look out for him ! '' cried 
Luke as he came fl}ing in the air. I evaded 
him b}' dropping flat in the bottom of the boat ; 
and, when I picked my traps up, he was spinning 
across the lake as if he had a new idea : but the 
line was still fast. He did not run far. I gave 
him the butt again ; a thing he seemed to hate, 
even as a gift. In a moment the evil-minded 
fish, lashing the water in his rage, was coming 
back again, making straight for the boat as 
oefore. Luke, who was used to these en- 
counters, having read of them in the writings of 
travellers he had accompanied, raised his paddle 
iu self-defence. The trout left the water about 
ten feet from the boat, and came direct^ at mo 
mth fiery eyes, his speckled sides flashing like a 
uieteor. I dodged as he whisked by with a 
ricious slap of his bifurcatea tail, and nearly 
ap»et the boat. The line was of course slack : 



32 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

and the danger was that he would entaagle it 
about me, and cany away a leg. This was evi- 
dently his game ; but I untangled it, and only 
lost a breast-button or two by the swiftly-moving 
string. The trout plunged into the water with a 
hissing sound, and went away again with all the 
line on the reel. More butt ; more indignation 
on the part of the captive. The contest had now 
been going on for half an hour, and I was get- 
ting exhausted. We had been back and forth 
across the lake, and round and round the lake. 
What I feared was, that the trout would start up 
the inlet, and wreck us in the bushes. But he 
had a new fanc}^, and began the execution of a 
manoemTC which I had never read of. Instead 
of coming straight towards me, he took a large 
circle, swimming* rapidly, and gradually contract- 
iiig his orbit. I reeled in, and kept my eye on 
him. Round and round he went, narrowing his 
eii'cle. I began to suspect the game ; which was, 
to twist my head off. When he had reduced the 
radius of his circle to about twenty-five feet, he 
itruck a tremendous pace through the water. Ii 



A FIGHT WITH A TROUT. 53 

Hrould be false modesty in a sportsman to say 
that 1 ^a§ not equal to the occasion. Instead of 
turning round with him, as he expected, I stepped 
to the bow, braced myself, and let the boat 
swing. Round went the fish, and round we went 
like a top. I saw a line of Mount Marcj^s all 
round the horizon; the rosy tint in the west 
made a broad band of pink along the sky above 
the tree-tops ; the evening star was a perfect 
circle of light, a hoop of gold in the heavens. 
We whiiied and reeled, and reeled and whirled. 
I was willing to give the malicious beast butt and 
line, and all, if he would only go the other way 
for a change. 

When I came to myself, Luke was gaffing the 
trout at the boat-side. After we had got him in 
and dressed him, he weighed three-quarters of a 
pound. Fish always lose by being '' got ill and 
dressed." It is best to weigh them while they 
are in the water. The only really large one I 
ev3r caught got away with my leader when I first 
itrack him. He weighed cen. pounds. 



IV. 



A-HUNTING OF THE DEER. 




F ci\41ization owes a debt of gratitude to 
the self-sacrificing sportsmen who have 
cleared the Adirondack regions of cata- 
mounts and savage trout, what shall be said of 
the army which has so nobly relieved them of the 
terror of the deer? The deer-slayers have some- 
what celebrated their exploits in print ; but I 
think that justice has never been done them. 

The American deer in the wilderness, left to 
himself, leads a comparatively harmless but 
rather stupid hfe, with only such excitement as 
his own timid fancy raises. It was ver}- seldom 
that one of his tribe was e^ten b}^ the North- 
American tiger. For a wild animal he is very 
elomestic, simple in his tastes, regular in his 



A-IIUNTING OF THE DEER. 55 

habits, affectionate in his family. Unfortunately 
for his repose, his haunch is as tender as his 
heart. Of all wild creatures he is one of the most 
graceful in action, and he poses with the skiU 
of an experienced model. I have seen the goats 
on Mount PenteUcus scatter at the approach of 
a stranger, climb to the sharp points of pra 
jecting rocks, and attitudinize in the most self- 
conscious manner, strilving at once those pictur- 
esque postures against the sky with which Oriental 
pictures have made us and them familiar. But 
the whole proceeding was theatrical. Greece is 
the home of art, and it is rare to find any thing 
there natural and unstudied. I presume that 
these goats have no nonsense about them when 
they are alone with the goat-herds, any more than 
the goat-herds have, except when they come to 
pose in the studio ; but the long ages of culture, 
the presence always to the eye of the best models 
and the forms of immortal beauty, the heroic 
friezes of the Temple of Theseus, the marble pro- 
cessions of sacrificial animals, have had a steady 
ftiouiding, educating influence equal to a society 



56 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

of decorative art upon the people and the animalft 
«^ho have dwelt in this artistic atmosphere. The 
Attic goat has become an artificially artistic 
being ; though of course he is not now what he 
was, as a poser, in the days of Potycletus. There 
is opportunity for a very instructive essay by Mr. 
E. A. Freeman on the decadence of the Attic 
goat under the influence of the Ottoman Turk. 

The American deer, in the free atmosphere of 
our country, and as yet untouched by our deco- 
rative art, is without self-consciousness, and all 
his attitudes are free and unstudied. The favor- 
ite position of the deer — his fore-feet in the 
shallow margin of the lake, among the lilj^-pads, 
his antlers thrown back and his nose in the air at 
the moment he hears the stealthy breaking of a 
twig in the forest — is still spirited and graceful, 
and wholly unaffected by the pictures of him 
which the artists have put upon canvas. 

Wherever you go in the Northern forest, you 
wiU find deer-paths. So plainly marked and 
well-trodden are the}^, that it is easy to mistake 
Ihem for trails made by hunters ; but he who 



i'HUNTING OF THE DEER, 67 



follows one of them is soon in difficulties. He 
may find himself climbing through cedar- thickets 
an almost inaccessible cliff, or immersed in the 
intricacies of a marsh. The "run," in one di- 
rection, will lead to water ; but, in the other, it 
climbs the highest hills, to which the deer retires, 
for safety and repose, in impenetrable thickets 
The hunters, in winter, find them congregated in 
" yards," where they can be surrounded and shot 
as easily as our troops shoot Comanche women 
and children in their winter villages. These 
little paths are full of pit-faUs among the roots 
and stones ; and, nimble as the deer is, he some- 
times breaks one of his slender legs in them. 
Yet he knows how to treat himself without a 
Burgeon. I knew of a tame deer in a settlement 
in the edge of the forest who had the misfortune 
to break her leg. She immediately disappeared 
with a delicacy rare in an invalid, and was not 
seen for two weeks. Her friends had given her 
up, supposing that she had dragged herself away 
into the depths of the woods , and died of staiTa- 
Uon; when one day she retuined, cured of 



58 IN THE WILDERNESS. 



lameness, but thin as a virgin shadow. She had 
the sense to shun the doctor ; to he down in some 
safe place, and patiently wait for her leg to heal. 
I have observed in many of the more refined 
animals this sort of shyness, and reluctance to 
give trouble, which excite our admiration when 
noticed in mankind. 

The deer is called a timid animal, and taunted 
with possessing courage only when he is '' at 
bay ; " the stag will fight when he can no longer 
flee ; and the doe will defend her j'outg in the 
face of murderous enemies. The deer gets httle 
credit for this eleventh-hour bravery. But I 
think, that, in any truly Chiistian condition of 
society, the deer would not be conspicuous for 
cowardice. I suppose that if the American girl, 
even as she is described in foreign romances, 
were pursued by bull-dogs, and fired at from, 
behind fences every time she ventured out- 
doors, she would become timid, and reluctant to 
go abroad. When that golden era comes whict 
the poets think is behind us, and the prophets de 
^lai'c is aljout to be ushered in by the opening of 



A-nUNTING OF THE DEER. 59 



the ''vials,'' and the kiUing of everybody who doea 
not believe as those nations believe which have 
the most cannon ; when we all live in real con- 
cord, —perhaps the gentle-hearted deer will be 
respected, and will find that men are not more 
savage to the weak than are the cougars and 
panthers. If the little spotted fawn can think, 
It must seem to her a queer world in which the 
advent of innocence is hailed by the baling of 
fierce hounds and the '' ping " of the rifle. 

Hunting the deer in the Adirondacks is con- 
ducted in the most manly fashion. There are 
several methods, and in none of them is a fair 
chance to the deer considered. A favorite meth- 
od with the natives is practised in winter, and 
is caUed by them " stiU hunting." My idea of 
still hunting is for one man to go alone into the 
forest, look about for a deer, put his wits fairly 
against the wits of the keen-scented animal, and 
kill his d^.er, or get lost in the attempt. There 
seems to be a sort of fairness about this. It is 
private assassination, tempered with a little un- 
certainty about finding your man. The stiU hunt- 



60 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

ing of the natives has all the romance and danger 
attending the slaughter of sheep in an abattoir. 
As the snow gets deep, many deer congregate^ 
in tlie depths of the forest, and keep a place 
trodden down, which gi'ows larger as thej 
tramp down the snow in search of food. In 
time this refuge becomes a sort of "yard,'* 
surrounded by unbroken snow-banks. The hunt- 
ers then make their way to this retreat on snow- 
shoes, and from the top of the banks pick off 
the deer at leisure with their rifles, and haul 
them awa}^ to market, until the enclosure is pretty 
much emptied. This is one of the sm'est methods 
of exterminating the deer ; it is also one of the 
most merciful ; and, being the plan adopted by 
our government for civilizing the Indian, it ought 
to be popular. The only people who object to it 
are the summer sportsmen. They naturally want 
some pleasure out of the death of the deer. 

Some of our best sportsmen, who desire to 
protract the pleasure of sla3ing deer through as 
many seasons as possible, object to the practice 
:>f the hunters, who make it their chief businesj 



A-HUNTINO OF THE DEER. C>\ 

to slaughter as many deer in a camping -season as 
they can. Their own rule, they say, i? to kill a 
deer only when they need venison to es-t. Their 
excuse is specious. What right have these soph- 
ists to put themselves into a desert place, out 
of the reach of pro^vdsions, and then ground a 
right to slay deer on their own improvidence? 
If it is necessary for these people to have any 
thing to eat, which I doubt, it is not necessary 
that they should have the luxury of venison. 

One of the most picturesque methods of hunt- 
ing the poor deer is called "floating." The 
person, with murder in his heart, chooses a 
cloudy night, seats himself, rifle in hand, in a 
canoe, which is noiselessly paddled by the guide, 
and explores the shore of the lake or the dark 
inlet. In the bow of the boat is a light in a 
"jack," the rrys of which are shielded from the 
boat and its occupants. A deer comes down tc 
feed upon the hly-pads. The boat approaches 
him. He looks up, and stands a moment, terri- 
fied or fascinated by the bright flames. In that 
Qioment the sportsman is supposed to shoot tb« 



62 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

deer. As an historical fact, his hand usually 
shakes, so that he misses the animal, or only 
wounds him ; and the stag limps away to die 
after daj^s of suffering. Usually, however, the 
hunters remain out all night, get stiff from cold 
and the cramped position in the boat, and, when 
they return in the morning to camp, cloud their 
future existence by the assertion that they " heard 
a big buck" moving along the shore, but the 
people in camp made so much noise that he was 
frightened off. 

By all odds, the favorite and prevalent mode 
is hunting with dogs. The dogs do the hunting, 
the men the killing. The hounds are sent into 
the forest to rouse the deer, and drive him from 
his cover. They climb the mountains, strike the 
trails, and go bajing and yelping on the track 
of the poor beast. The deer have their estab- 
Ushed run-ways, a? I said ; and, when they are 
disturbed in their retreat, they are certain to 
attempt to escape by following one which in- 
\ariably leads to gome lake or stream. AU tha* 
fbe hunter has to do is to seat himself bv one o/ 



A-HUNTING OF THE DEER. 63 



these run-ways, or sit in a boat on the lake, and 
wait the coming of the pursued deer. Tho 
frightened beast, fleeing from the unreasoning 
brutality of the hounds, will often seek the open 
country, with a mistaken confidence in thti hu- 
manity of man. To kill a deer when he suddenly 
passes one on a run-way demands presence of 
mind, and quickness of aim : to shoot him from 
the boat, after he has plunged panting into the 
lake, requires the rare ability to hit a moving 
object the size of a deer's head a few rods dis- 
tant. Either exploit is sufficient to make a hero 
of a common man. To paddle up to the swim- 
ming deer, and cut his throat, is a sure means 
of getting venison, and has its charms for some. 
Even women, and doctors of divinity, have en- 
joyed this exquisite pleasure. It cannot be denied 
that we are so constituted by a wise Creator as to 
feel a deMght in kilhng a wild animal which we 
do not experience m killing a tame one. 

The pleasurable excitement of a deer- hunt has 
never, I beheve, been regarded from the deer'a 
point of view I hap^vn to be in a position 



64 m THE WILDERNESS. 



by reason of a lucky Adirondack experience, to 
present it in that light. I am sorry if this intro- 
duction to mj^ little story has seemed long to the 
reader : it is too late now to skip it ; but he can 
recoup himself by omitting the story. 

Early on the morning of the 23d of August, 
1877, a doe was feeding on Basin Mountain. 
The night had been warm and showery, and the 
morning opened in an undecided way. The 
wind was southerly: it is what the deer call a 
dog- wind, ha\ang come to know quite weU the 
meaning of ''a southerly wind and a cloud}' 
sky.'* The sole companion of the doe was her 
only child, a charming little fawn, whose brown 
coat was just beginning to be mottled with the 
beautiful spots which make this young creature 
as lovely as the gazelle. The buck, its father 
had been that night on a long tramp across the 
mountain to Clear Pond, and had not yet re- 
turned : he went ostensibly to feed on the sue. 
culent lily-pads there. '' He feedeth among the 
lilies until the day break and the shadows flee 
away, and he should be here by this hour ; bif 



A-HUNTING OF THE DLJJR. 



he Cometh not/* she said, "leaping upon the 
mountains , skipping upon the hills . ' ' Clear Pond 
«vas too far off for the young mother to go with 
her fawn for a night's pleasure. It was a fashion- 
able watering-place at this season among the 
deer; and the doe may have remembered, not 
without uneasiness, the moonlight meetings of a 
frivolous society there. But the buck did not 
come : he was very likely sleeping under one of 
the ledges on Tight Nippin. Was he alone? "I 
charge you, by the roes and by the hinds of the 
field, that ye stir not nor awake my love till he 
please.*' 

The doe was feeding, daintily cropping the 
tender leaves of the young shoots, and turning 
from time to time to regard her offspring. The 
fawn had taken his morning meal, and now lay 
curled up on a bed of moss, watching contented- 
ly, with his large, soft brown eyes, every move- 
ment of his mother. The great eyes followed 
her with an alert entreaty ; and, if the mother 
8tei:)ped a pace or two farther away in feeding, 
the fawn made a I ilf movement, as if to rise ani 



66 IN THE WILDERWESS. 

follow her. You see, she was his sole depend- 
ence in all the world. But he was quickl}' re-as- 
sured when she turned her gaze on him ; and if, 
in alarm, he uttered a plaintive cr^^, she bounded 
to him at once, and, with every demonstration of 
affection, licked his mottled skin till it shone 
again. 

It was a pretty picture, — maternal love on the 
one part, and happy trust on the other. The 
doe was a beauty, and would have been so con- 
sidered anj^where, as graceful and winning a 
creature as the sun that day shone on, — slender 
limbs, not too heavy flanks, round body, and 
aristocratic head, with small ears, and luminous, 
intelligent, affectionate eyes. How alert, nipple, 
free, she was ! What untaught grace in every 
movement ! What a charming pose when she 
lifted her head, and turned it to regard her child ! 
You would have had a companion-picture, if j'ou 
had seen, as I saw that morning, a baby kicking 
about among the dry pine-needles on a ledge 
above the Ausable, in the valley below, wliile it» 
roung raotJier sat near, with an easel befoie hor 



A-HUNTING OF TUlL DEER. O? 

touching in the color of a reluctant landscape, 
giving a quick look at the sky and the outline of 
the Twin Mountains, and bestowing every third 
glance upon the laughing boy, — art in its in 
fancy. 

The doe lifted her head a little with a quick 
motion, and turned her ear to the south. Had 
Bhe heard something ? Probably it was only the 
south wind in the balsams. There was silence 
all about in the forest. If the doe had heard 
any thing, it was one of the distant noises of the 
world. There are in the woods occasional moan- 
ings, premonitions of change, which are inaudi- 
ble to the dull ears of men, but which, I have no 
doubt, the forest-folk hear and understand. If 
the doe's suspicions were excited for an instant, 
they were gone as soon. With an affectionate 
glance at her fawn, she continued picking up her 
breakfast. 

But suddenly she started, head erect, eyes 
ducted, a tremor in her limbs. She took a step ; 
Bhe turned her head to the south; she listened 
Uitently. There was s sound, — a distant, pro 



IN tllE wilderness. 



longed note, bell-toned, pervading the woods, shak 
mg the air in smooth vibrations. It was repeated. 
The doe had no doubt now. She shook like the 
sensitive mimosa when a footstep approaches. 
It was the baling of a hound ! It was far off, — 
fit the foot of the mountain, "time enough Ixj 
fly; time enough to put miles between her and 
the hound, before he should come upon her fresh 
trail; time enough to escape away thi'ough the 
dense forest, and hide in the recesses of Panther 
Gorge ; yes, time enough. But there was the 
fawn. The cry of the hound was repeated, more 
distinct this time. The mother instinct! vel}^ 
bounded away a few paces. The fawn started 
up with an anxious bleat : the doe turned ; she 
came back ; she couldn't leave it. She bent over 
it, and licked it, and seemed to say, '' Come, 
my child: we are pursued: we must go.'* She 
walked away towards the west, and the Uttle 
thing skipped after her. It was slow going foi 
the slender legs, over the fallen logs, and through 
Ihe rasping bushes. The doe bounded in ad- 
vance, and waited : the fawn scrambled after hex 



A-HUNTING OF THE DEER. 69 



Blipping and tumbling along, very groggy jat oii 
its legs, and whining a good deal because its 
mother kept alwaj'S moving away from it. The 
fawn evidently did not hear the hound : the httle 
innocent would even have looked sweetly at 
the dog, and tried to make friends with it, if the 
brute had been rushing upon him. By all the 
means at her command the doe urged her 3'Oung 
one on ; but it was slow work. She might have 
been a mile away while they were making a few 
rods. Whenever the fawn caught up, he was 
quite content to frisk about. He wanted more 
breakfast, for one thing ; and his mother wouldn't 
stand stiU. She moved on continually ; and his 
weak legs were tangled in the roots of the narrow 
deer-path. 

Shortly came a sound that threw the doe into 
a panic of terror, — a short, sharp yelp, followed 
by a prolonged howl, caught up and re-eohoed by 
other biijdngs iilong the mountain- side. The doe 
knew what that meant. One hound had caught 
ber trail, and the whole pack responded to the 
" new-halloo / The danger was certain now 



70 m THE WILDERNESS. 

it was near. She could not crawl on in thia 
wa}' : the dogs would soon be upon them. She 
turned again for flight : the fawn, scrambhng 
after her, tumbled over, and bleated piteously. 
The bapng, emphasized now by the yelp of cer- 
tainty, came nearer. Flight with the fawn was 
impossible. The doe retm'ned and stood by it, 
head erect, and nostrils distended. She stood 
perfectly still, but trembling. Perhaps she was 
thinldng. The fawn took advantage of the situa- 
tion, and began to draw his luncheon ration. 
The doe seemed to have made up her mind. She 
let him finish. The fawn, ha^dng taken all he 
wanted, laj^ down contented^, and the doe licked 
him for a moment. Then, with the swiftness of 
a bird, she dashed away, and in a moment was 
lost in the forest. She went in the du*ection of 
the hounds. 

-According to all human calculations, she waa 
going into the jaws of death. So she was : all 
aimian calculations are selfish. She kept straight 
on, hearing the bapng every moment more dis» 
Unetl}'. She descended the slope of the inoui> 



A-mJNTING OF TEE DEER. 71 

tain until she reached the more open forest of 
hard- wood. It was freer going here, and tho 
cry of the pack echoed more resoundingly in the 
great spaces. She was going due east, when 
'[judging by the sound, the hounds were not far 
off, though they were still hidden by a ridge) she 
turned short away to the norths and kept on at a 
good pace. In five minutes more she heard the 
sharp, exultant yelp of discovery, and then the 
deep-mouthed howl of pursuit. The hounds had 
struck her trail where she turned, and the fawn 
was safe. 

The doe was in good running condition, the 
ground was not bad, and she felt the exhilaration 
of the chase. For the moment, fear left her, and 
she bounded on with the exaltation of triumph. 
For a quarter of an hour she went on at a slap- 
ping pace, clearing the moose-bushes with bound 
after bound, fl}ing over the fallen logs, pausing 
neither for brook nor ravine. The baying of the 
hounds grew fainter behind her. "Rut she struck 
ft bad piece of going, a dead-wood slash. It was 
marvellous to see her skiia over it, leaping -among 



72 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

its intricacies, and not breaking her slender legs. 
No other living animal could do it. But it waa 
killing work. She began to pant fearfully ; she 
lost ground. The baling of the hounds was nea:- 
er. She climbed the hard-wood hill at a slower 
gait ; but, once on more level, free ground, hei 
breath came back to her, and she stretched awaj; 
with new courage, and maybe a sort of contempt 
of her heavy pursuers. 

After running at high speed perhaps half a mile 
farther, it occurred to her that it would be safe 
now to turn to the west, and, by a wide circuit, 
seek her fawn. But, at the moment, she heard a 
sound that chilled her heart. It was the cry of 
a hound to the west of her. The crafty brute 
had made the circuit of the slash, and cut off her 
retreat. There was nothing to do but to keep 
on ; and on she went, still to the north, with the 
noise of the pack behind her. In five minutes 
n?cre she had passed into a hillside clearing. 
Cows and young steers were grazing there. She 
heard a tinkle of bells. Below her, down the 
giountain-slope, were other clearings, broken b| 



A-EUNTING OF THE DEER. 73 



patches of woods. Fences intervened ; and a mile 
or two down lay the valley, the shining Ausable, 
and the peaceful farm-houses. That way also her 
hereditary enemies were. Not a merciful heart 
in all that lovely valley. She hesitated : it was 
only for an instant. She must cross the Slide- 
brook Valley if possible, and gain the mountain 
opposite. She bounded on ; she stopped. What 
was that? From the valley ahead came the cry 
of a searching hound. All the devils were loose 
this morning. Every way was closed but one, 
and that led straight down the mountain to the 
cluster of houses. Conspicuous among them was 
a slender white wooden spire. The doe did not 
know that it was the spire of a Christian chapel. 
But perhaps she thought that human pity dwelt 
there, and would be more merciful than the teeth 
of the hounds. 

" The hounds are baying on my track: 
O white man I will you send me back? " 

In a panic, frightened animals will always fle6 
10 human-kmd from the danger of more savage 



74 IN THE WILDERNESS. 



foes. They always make a mistake in doin j so 
Perhaps the trait is the survival of an era of 
peace on earth ; j)erhaps it is a prophecy of the 
golden age of the future. The business of this 
age is murder, — the slaughter of animals, the 
slaughter of fellow-men, by the wholesale. Hila- 
rious poets who have never fired a gun wri'^e 
hunting-songs, — Ti-ra-la : and good bishops 
write war-songs, — Ave the Czar! 

The hunted doe went down the " open,'' clear 
ing the fences splendidly, fl}ing along the stony 
path. It was a beautiful sight. But consider 
what a shot it was ! If the deer, now, could only 
have been caught ! No doubt there were tender- 
hearted people in the valley who would have 
spared her life, shut her up in a stable, and 
petted her. Was there one who would have let 
her go back to her waiting fawn ? It is the busi 
ness of civilization to tame or kill. 

The doe went on. She left the saw-mill on 
lohn's Brook to her right; she turned into a 
wood-path. As she approached Slide Brook, she 
*aw a boy standing by a tree with a raised rifle. 



A-HUNTING OF THE DEER. 73 



The dogs were not in sight ; but she could hear 
them coming down the hill. There was no time 
for hesitation. With a tremendous bm-st of speed 
she cleared the stream, and, as she touched the 
bank, heard the " ping" of a rifle-bullet in the 
air above her. The cruel sound gave wings to 
the poor thing. In a moment more she was in 
the opening : she leaped into the travelled road. 
Which way ? Below her in the wood was a load 
of hay : a man and a boy, with pitchforks in their 
hands, were running towards her. She turned 
south, and flew along the street. The town was 
up. Women and children ran to the doors and 
windows ; men snatched their rifles ; shots were 
fired; at the big boarding-houses, the summer 
boarders, who never have any thing to do, came 
out and cheered j a camp-stool was thrown from 
a veranda. Some young fellows shooting at a 
mark in the meadow saw the flying deer, and 
popped away at her ; but they were accustomed 
to a mark that stood still. It was all so sudden ! 
There were twenty people who were just going 
to shoot hei ; when the doe leaped the road 



76 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

fence, and went away across a marsh toward the 
foot-hills. It was a fearful gantlet to run. But 
nobody except the deer considered it in that hght. 
Everybody told what he was just going to do; 
everybody who had seen the performance was a 
kind of hero, — everybody except the deer. For 
days and days it was the subject of conversa- 
tion; and the summer boarders kept their guns 
at hand, expecting another deer would come to 
be shot at. 

The doe went away to the foot-hills, going now 
slower, and evidently fatigued, if not frightened 
half to death. Nothing is so appalhng to a re- 
cluse as half a mile of summer boarders. As 
the deer entered the thin woods, she saw a rabble 
f^f people start across the meadow in pursuit. By 
this time, the dogs, panting, and loUing out their 
tongues, came swinging along, keeping the trail, 
like stupids, and consequently losing gi'ound when 
the deer doubled. But, when the doe had got into 
the timber, she heard the savage brutes howhng 
across the meadow. (It is well enough, perhaps 
to say that nobody offered to shoot the dogs.) 



A-EUNTING OF THE DEER. 71 

The courage of the panting fugitive was not 
gone : she was game to the tip of her high-bred 
ears. But the fearful pace at which she had just 
been going told on her. Her legs trembled, and 
her heart beat hke a trip-hammer. She slowed 
her speed perforce, but still fled industriously up 
the right bank of the stream. When she had 
gone a couple of miles, and the dogs were evi- 
dently gaining again, she crossed the broad, deep 
brook, chmbed the steep left bank, and fled on in 
the direction of the Mount-Marcy trail. The 
fording of the river threw the hounds off for a 
time. She knew, by their uncertain yelping up 
and down the opposite bank, that she had a httle 
respite : she used it, however, to push on unti^ 
the baling was faint in her ears ; and then she 
dropped, exhausted, upon the ground. 

This rest, brief as it was, saved her life. 
Roused again by the baling pack, she leaped for- 
ward with better speed, though without that keen 
feeling of exhilarating flight that she had in the 
morning. It was stiU a race for life ; but the odda 
rere in her favor, she thought. She did not ap* 



78 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

predate the dogged persistence of the hounds, nor 
had any inspiration told her that the race is not to 
the swift. She was a little confused in her mind 
where to go ; but an instinct kept her course 
to the left, and consequently farther away from 
her fawn. Going now slower, and now faster, as 
the pursuit seemed more distant or nearer, she 
kept to the south-west, crossed the stream again, 
left Panther Gorge on her right, and ran on by 
Haj^stack and Skj-light in the direction of the 
Upper Ausable Pond. I do not know her exact 
course through this maze of mountains, swamps, 
ravines, and frightful wildernesses. I only know 
that the poor thing worked her way along pain- 
fully, with sinking heart and unsteady limbs, 
l^ing down " dead beat'* at intervals, and then 
spurred on by the cry of the remorseless dogs, 
until, late in the afternoon, she staggered down 
the shoulder of Bartlett, and stood upon the shore 
of the lake. If she could put that piece of water 
between her and her pursuers, she would be safe 
Had she strength to swim it? 
At her first step into the water she saw a sigh»r 



A-miNTING OF THE DEER. 70 

that sent her back with a bound. There was a 
boat mid-lake : two men were in it. One was 
rowing : the other had a gun in his hand. They 
were looking towards her : they had seen her. 
(She did not know that they had heard the bay- 
ing of hounds on the mountains, and had been 
Ijdng in wait for her an hour.) What should she 
do ? The hounds were drawing near. No escape 
that way, even if she could still run. With only 
a moment's hesitation she plunged into the lake, 
and struck obhquely across. Her tired legs could 
not propel the tii'ed body rapidly. She saw the 
boat headed for her. She turned toward the cen- 
tre of the lake. The boat turned. She couki 
near the rattle of the oar-locks. It was gaining 
on her. Then there was a silence. Then there 
was a splash of the water just ahead of her, fol- 
lowed by a roar round the lake, the words " Con- 
fcamd it all!" and a rattle of the oars again. 
The doe saw the boat nearing her. She turned 
iiTesolutel}^ to the shore whence she came : the 
dogs were lapping the water, and howling there 
She turned again to the jentre of the lake. 



BO IN THE WILDERNESS. 

The brave, pretty creature was quite exhausted 
now. In a moment more, with a rush of water, 
the boat was on her, and the man at the oars had 
leaned over and caught her by the tail. 

" Knock her on the head with that paddle ! '* 
he shouted to the gentleman in the stern. 

The gentleman was a gentleman, with a kind, 
smooth-shaven face, and might have been a min- 
ister of some sort of everlasting gospel. He 
took the paddle in his hand. Just then the doe 
turned her head, and looked at him with her 
great, appealing eyes. 

" I can't do it ! my soul, I can't do it ! ** and 
he dropped the paddle. "Oh, let her go ! '* 

" Let H. go ! " was the only response of the 
guide as he slung the deer round, whipped out 
his hunting-knife, and made a pass that seveied 
her jugular. 

And the gentleman ate that night of the veni 
Bon. 

The buck returned about the middle of the 
afternoon. The fawn was bleating piteously^ 



A-HUNTING OF THE DEER. 81 

hungry and lonesome. The buck was surprised. 
He looked about in the forest. He took a circuit, 
and came back. His doe was nowhere to be 
seen. He looked down at the fawn in a helpless 
sort of way. The fawn appealed for his supper. 
The buck had nothing whatever to give his child, 
— nothing but his sj^mpathy. If he said any 
thing, this is what he said : " I'm the head of this 
family ; but, really, this is a novel case. I've noth- 
ing whatever for 3'ou. I don't know what to do. 
I've the feelings of a father ; but you can't live 
on them. Let us travel." 

The buck walked away : the little one toddle^ 
after him. They disappeared in the forest. 




V. 



A CHARACTER STUDY. 




HERE has been a lively inquiry after 
the primeval man. Wanted, a man 
who would satisf}^ the conditions of the 
miocene environment, and 3'et would be good 
enough for an ancestor. We are not particular 
about our ancestors, if they are sufficiently re- 
mote ; but we must have something. Failing to 
apprehend the primeval man, science has sought 
the primitive man where he exists as a survival 
in present savage races. He is, at best, only a 
mushroom growth of the recent period (came in, 
probabl}', with the general raft of mammalian 
fauna) ; but he possesses 3'et some rudimentary 
traits that may be studied. 

It is a good mental exercise to try to fix the 



A CHARACTER STUDY. 83 

mind on the primitive man divested of all the 
Rttributes he has acquired in his struggles -VNith 
the other mammalian fauna. Fix the mind on 
an orange, the ordinary occupation of the meta- 
physician : talre from it (without eating it) odor, 
color, weighty form, substance, and peel ; then 
let the mind still dwell on it as an orange. Tlie 
experiment is perfectly successful; onl}^ at the 
end of it, you haven't any mind. Better still, 
consider the telephone : take away from it the 
metallic disk, and the magnetized iron, and the 
connecting wire, and then let the mind run 
abroad on the telephone. The mind won't come 
back. I have tried by this sort of process to get 
a conception of the primitive man. I let the 
mind roam away back over the vast geologic 
spaces, and sometimes fancy I see a dim image 
^>f him stalking across the terrace epoch of the 
quaternary period. 

But this is an unsatisf3'ing pleasure. The best 
results are obtained by stud3dng the primitive 
man as he is left here and there in our era, a 
«ritness of what has been ,• and I find him moft 



H IN THE WILDERNESS. 

wO my mind in the Adirondack system of what 
geologists call the Champlain epoch. I suppose 
the primitive man is one who owes more to 
nature than to the forces of civihzation. What 
we seek in him are the primal and original traits, 
unmixed with the sophistications of society, and 
unimpaired by the refinements of an artificial 
culture. He would retain the primitive instincts, 
which are cultivated out of the ordinary, com- 
monplace man. I should expect to find him, by 
reason of an unrehnquished kinsjiip, enjopng a 
special communion with natm'e, — admitted to 
its mysteries, understanding its moods, and able 
to predict its vagaries. He would be a kind of 
test to us of what we have lost by our gregarious 
acquisitions. On the one hand, there would be 
the shai-pness of the senses, the keen instincts 
(which the fox and the beaver still possess) , the 
ability to find one's way in the pathless forest, to 
follow a trail, to cii'cumvent the wild denizens of 
llie woods ; and, on the other hand, there would 
be the philosophy of life which the primitive 
man, ?rith little external aid, would evolve fron 



A CHARACTER STUDY. 85 



original observation and cogitation. It is our 
good fortune to know such a man ; but it is diffi 
cult to present him to a scientific and cavilhng 
generation. He emigrated from somewhat limited 
conditions in Vermont, at an earlj^ age, near'y 
half a century ago, and sought freedom for his 
natural development backward in the wilds of the 
Adirondacks. Sometimes it is a love of adven- 
ture and freedom that sends men out of the more 
civihzed conditions into the less ; sometimes it is 
a constitutional physical lassitude which leads 
them to prefer the rod to the hoe, the trap to the 
sickle, and the society of bears to town-meetings 
and taxes. I think that Old Mountain Phelps 
had merely the instincts of the primitive man, 
and never any hostile civilizing intent as to the 
wilderness into which he plunged. Why should 
he want to slash away the forest, and plough up 
the ancient mould, when it is infinitely pleasanter 
to roam about in the leafy solitudes, or sit upon a 
mossy log and listen to the chatter of birds and 
the stir of beasts? Are there not trout in the 
streams, gum exuding f»'om the spruce, sugar id 



86 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

the maples, honey in the hollow trees, fur on the 
Babies, warmth in liickorj^-logs? Will not a few 
clays' planting and scratching in the "open" 
yield potatoes and rye? And, if there is steadier 
diet needed than venison and bear, is the pig an 
expensive animal ? If Old Phelps bowed to the 
prejudice or fashion of his age (since we have 
come out of the tertiary state of things), and 
reared a family, built a frame-house in a secluded 
nook by a cold spring, planted about it some 
apple-trees and a rudimentary garden, and in- 
stalled a group of flaming sunflowers by the door, 
I am cominced that it was a concession that did 
not touch his radical character ; that is to say, it 
did not impair his reluctance to spht oven-wood. 
He was a true citizen of the wilderness. 
Thoreau would have liked him, as he liked In- 
dians and woodchucks, and the smell of pine- 
foiests; and, if Old Phelps had seen Thoreau, 
he would probably have said to him. "Why cii 
uirth, Mr. Thoreau, don't jou. live accordin' to 
your preachin' ? " You might be misled by th* 
shaggy suggestion of Old Phelps's given name — 



A CnARACTER STUDY. 87 

OrsoD — into the notion that he was a miglity 
hunter, with the fierce spirit of the Berserkers in 
his veins. Nothing could be farther from the 
buth. The hu'sute and grisly sound of Orson 
expresses only his entire affinity with the untamed 
and the natural, an uncouth but gentle passion 
for the freedom and wildness of the forest. Or- 
son Phelps has only those unconventional and 
humorous qualities of the bear which make the 
animal so beloved in hterature ; and one does not 
think of Old Phelps so much as a lover of nature, 
— to use the sentimental slang of the period, — 
as a part of nature itself. 

His appearance at the time when as a " guide '* 
he began to come into public notice fostered 
this impression, — a sturdy figure, with long 
bod}^ and short legs, clad in a woollen shii't and 
butternut-colored trousers repaired to the point 
of p)icturesqueness, his head surmounted by a 
limp, light-brown felt hat, frayed awa}^ at the 
top, so that his 3'ellowish hair grew out of it like 
gome nameless fern out of a pot. His tawny 
uair was long and tangled, matted now man^ 



88 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

j^ears past the possibility of being entered by a 
comb. His featui-es were small and delicate, and 
set in the frame of a reddish beard, the razor 
having mowed away a clearing about the sensi- 
tive mouth, which was not seldom wi'eathed with 
a child-like and charming smile. Out of this 
hirsute eniironment looked the small gray eyes. 
Bet near together; eyes keen to observe, and 
quick to express change of thought ; eyes that 
made you believe instinct can grow into philo- 
sophic judgment. His feet and hands were of 
aristocratic smallness, although the latter were 
not worn away by ablutions ; in fact, they assisted 
his toilet to give you the impression that here 
was a man who had just come out of the ground, 
► - a real son of the soil, whose appearance was 
partially explained by his humorous relation to 
Bonp. ^' Soap is a thing," he said, "that I 
Laiu't no kinder use for." His clothes seemed 
to have been put on him once for all, like the 
Dark of a tree, a long time ago. The observant 
%tranger was sure to be puzzled by the contras* 
Df this realistic and uncouth exterior with th« 



A CHARACTER STUDY. 89 



Internal fineness, amounting to refinement and 
culture, that shone through it all. What com- 
munion had supplied the place of our artificia 
breeding to this man? 

Perhaps his most characteristic attitude was 
Bitting on a log, with a short pipe in his mouth. 
If ever man was formed to sit on a log, it was 
Old Phelps. He was essentially a contemplative 
person. WaUiing on a country road, or any- 
where in the " open," was irksome to him. He 
had a shambling, loose-jointed gait, not unlike 
that of the bear : his short legs bowed out, as if 
they had been more in the habit of climbing trees 
than of walking. On land, if we may use thai 
expression, he was something like a sailor ; but, 
once in the rugged trail or the unmarked route 
of his native forest, he was a different person, 
and few pedestrians could compete with him. 
The vulgar estimate of his contemporaries, thai 
reckoned Old Phelps "lazy,*' was simply a fail- 
ure to comprehend the conditions of his being. 
It is the unjustness of civilization that it sets up 
aniJbrra and artificial standards for all persons 



90 IN THE WILDERNESS. 



The primitive man suffers by them much as the 
contemplative philosopher does, when one hap- 
pens to arrive in this bus}', fussy world. 

If the appearance of Old Phelps attracts at- 
tention, his voice, when first heard, invariably 
startles the listener. A small, high-pitched, half- 
qu2rulous voice, it easily rises into the shrillest 
falsetto ; and it has a quality in it that makes it 
audible in all the tempests of the forest, or the 
roar of rapids, hke the piping of a boatswain's 
whistle at sea in a gale. He has a wa}^ of letting 
it rise as his sentence goes on, or when he is 
opposed in argument, or wishes to mount above 
other voices in the conversation, until it dominates 
Gvary thing. Heard in the depths of the broods, 
quavering aloft, it is felt to be as much a part oi 
nature, an original force, as the north-west wind 
or the scream of the hen-hawk. When he is pot- 
t( ring about the camp-fire, trjing to hght his pipe 
with a twig held in the flame, he is w^t to begin 
some pliilosophical observation in a small, slow 
Btunibling voice, which seems about to end iu 
ilcfcal ; when he puts on some unsuspected force, 



A CHARACTER STUDY. 91 

and the sentence ends in an insistent shriek. 
Horace Greeley had such a voice, and could regu- 
late it in the same manner. But Phelps's voice ia 
not seldom plaintive, as if touched by the dreamy 
sadness of the woods themselves. 

When Old Mountain Phelps was discovered, he 
was, as the reader has alread}^ guessed, not un- 
derstood by his contemporaries. His neighbors, 
farmers in the secluded valley, had many of them 
grown thrifty and prosperous, cultivating the fer- 
tile meadows, and vigorously attacking the tim 
bered mountains ; while Phelps, with not much 
more faculty of acquiring property than the roam- 
ing deer, had pursued the even tenor of the life 
in the forest on which he set out. They would 
have been surprised to be told that Old Phelps 
owned more of what makes the value of the 
Adirondacks than all of them put together , 
but it was true. This woodsman, this trapper, 
this hunter, this fisherman, this sitter on a log, 
and philosopher, was the real proprietor of thu 
region over which he was ready to guide the 
vtrangftr. It is true that he had not a monopoly 



92 IN THE WILDERNESS. 



of its geography or its topography (though Ms 
knowledge was superior in these respects) ; there 
were other trapj^ers, and more deadly hunters, 
and as intrepid guides : but Old Phelps was the 
discoverer of the beauties and sublimities of the 
mountains ; and, when city strangers broke into 
the region, he monopolized the appreciation of 
these dehghts and wonders of nature. I suppose, 
that, in all that country, he alone had noticed the 
sunsets, and observ^ed the delightful processes of 
the seasons, taken pleasure in the woods for 
themselves, and climbed mountains solely for the 
sake of the prospect. He alone understood what 
was meant by "scenery.** In the eyes of his 
neighbors, who did not know that he was a poet 
and a philosopher, I dare say he appeared to be 
a slack provider, a rather shiftless trapper and 
fisherman ; and his passionate love of the forest 
and the mountains, if it was noticed, was ac- 
counted to him for idleness. When the appreci- 
ative tourist arrived, Phelps was ready, as guide, 
to open to him all the wonders of his possessions 
he, for the fii'st time, found an outlet for his en 



A CHARACTER STUDY. 93 

thusiasm, and a response to his own passion 
It then became known what manner of man this 
was who had grown up here in the companionship 
of forests, mountains, and wild animals ; that 
these scenes had highly developed in him the lovo 
of beauty, the aesthetic sense, dehcacy of appre- 
ciation, refinement of feeling ; and that, in hie 
Bohtary wanderings and musings, the primitive 
man, self-taught, had evolved for himself a phi- 
losophy and a system of things. And it was s, 
sufficient system, so long as it was not disturbed 
by external scepticism. When the outer world 
came to him, perhaps he had about as much to 
give to it as to receive from it ; probably more, in 
his own estimation ; for there is no conceit like 
that of isolation. 

Phelps loved his mountains. He was the dis- 
coverer of Marcy, and caused the first trail to be 
cut to ii'.s summit, so that others could enjoy the 
noble V ews from its round and rocky top. To 
him it was, in nobie symmetry and beauty, tho 
?hief mountain of the globe. To stand on it 
j^ave him, as he said, " a feeling of heaven up- 



94 IN THE WILDERNESS. 



h'isted-ness.'* He heard with impatience that 
Mount Washington was a thousand feet higher, 
and he had a child-lil^e incredulity about the sor- 
passhig sublimity of the Alps. Praise of any 
other elevation he seemed to consider a slight to 
Mount Marcy, and did not wiUingly hear it, any 
more than a lover hears the laudation of the 
beauty of another woman than the one he loves. 
When he showed us scenery he loved, it made 
him melancholy to have us speak of scenery else- 
where that was finer. And yet there was this 
deUcacy about him, that he never over-praised 
what he brought us to see, any more than one 
would over-praise a friend of whom he was fond. 
I remember, that when for the first time, after a 
toilsome journey through the forest, the splendors 
of the Lower Ausable Pond broke upon our 
vision, — that low-ljing silver lake, imprisoned 
by the precipices which it reflected in its bosom. 
— he made no outward response to our burst of 
admiration : onl}' a quiet gleam of the ej'c showed 
the pT.easure our appreciation gave him. As som« 
Due said, it was as if his friend had been admh-ed. 



A CHARACTER STUDY. 95 



— a friend about whom he was unwilling to say 
much himself, but well pleased to have others 
praise. 

Thus far, we have considered Old Phelps aa 
Bimply the product of the Adirondacks ; not so 
much a self-made man (as the doubtful phrase 
has it) as a natural growth amid primal forces. 
But our study is interrupted by another influence, 
which complicates the problem, but increases its 
interest. No scientific observer, so far as we 
know, has ever been able to watch the develop- 
ment of the primitive man, played upon and 
fashioned by the hebdomadal iteration of " Gree- 
ley's Weekly Tri-bune." Old Phelps educated 
by the woods is a fascinating study; educated 
by the woods and the Tri-bune, he is a phenome- 
non. No one at this day can reasonably con- 
ceive exactly what this newspaper was to such 
a mountain valley as Keene. K it was not a 
Providence, it was a Bible. It was no doubt 
owing to it that Democrats became as scarce aa 
moose in the Adirondacks. But it is not of its 
pohtical aspect that T s;>eak. I suppose that the 



96 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

most cultivated and best informed portion of the 
earth's surface — the Western Reserve of Ohio, 
as free from conceit as it is from a suspicion 
that it lacks any thing — owes its pre-eminence 
solely to this comprehensive journal. It received 
from it every thing except a collegiate and a classi~ 
cal education, — things not to be desired, since 
they interfere with the self-manufacture of man. 
If Greek had been in this curriculum, its best 
known dictum would have been translated, 
^'Make thyself." This journal carried to the 
community that fed on it not only a complete 
education in aU departments of human practice 
and theorizing, but the more valuable and satis- 
fying assurance that there was nothing more to 
be gleaned in the universe worth the attention of 
man. This panoplied its readers in completeness. 
Politics, literature, arts, sciences, universal broth- 
erhood and sisterhood, — nothing was omitted; 
neither the poetry of Tennyson, nor the philos- 
ophy of Margaret Fuller ; neither the virtues of 
association, nor of unbolted wheat. The lawi 
of poUtical economy and trade were laid down at 



A CHARACTER STUDY. 97 

positively and clearly as the best way to bake 
beans, and the saving truth that the millennium 
would come, and come only when every foot of 
the earth was subsoiled. 

I do not say that Orson Phelps was the product 
of nature and the Tri-bune ; but he cannot be 
explained without considering these two factors. 
To him Greeley was the Tri-bune, and the Tri- 
bune was Greeley ; and yet I think he conceived 
of Horace Greeley as something greater than his 
newspaper, and perhaps capable of producing 
another journal equal to it in another part of the 
universe. At any rate, so completely did Phelps 
absorb this paper and this personahty, that he 
was popularly known as '' Greeley '* in the region 
where he lived. Perhaps a fancied resemblance 
of the two men in the popular mind had some- 
thing to do with this transfer of name. There is 
no doubt that Horace Greeley owed his vast in- 
fluence in the country to his genius, nor much 
doubt that he owed his popularity in the rural 
districts to James Gordon Bennett ; that is, to 
the personaht}^ of the man which the ingenious 



98 IN THE WlLDERNEbS. 

Bennett impressed upon the country. That he 
despised the conventionalities of society, and was 
a sloven in his toilet, was firmly believed ; and 
the ]jelief endeared him to the hearts of the 
people. To them "the old white coat*' — an 
antique garment of unrenewed immortahty — was 
as much a subject of idolatry as the redlngote 
grise to the soldiers of the first Napoleon, who 
had seen it by the camp-fires on the Po and on 
the Borj'sthenes, and believed that he would come 
again in it to lead them against the enemies of 
France. The Greeley of the popular heart was 
clad as Bennett said he was clad. It was in vain, 
even pathetically in vain, that he pubhshed in his 
newspaper the full bill of his fashionable tailor 
(the fact that it was receipted maj^ have excited 
the animosity of some of his contemporaries) to 
show that he wore the best broadcloth, and that 
the folds of his trousers followed the city fasliion 
of falling outside his boots. If this revelation 
was beheved, it made no sort of impression in 
the country. The rural readers were not to be 
wheedled out of their cherished conception o* 



A CHARACTER STUDY. 98 



whe personal appearance of the philosophei of 
the Tri-bune. 

That the Tri-bune taught Old Thelps to be 
more Phelps than he would have been without it 
was part of the independence-teaching mission 
of Greeley's paper. The subscribers were an 
army, in which every man was a general. And 
I am not surprised to find Old Phelps lately rising 
lo the audacity of criticising his exemplar. In 
some recently-pubhshed observations by Phelps 
upon the philosophy of reading is laid down this 
definition: " If ^ I understand the necessity or 
use of reading, it is to reproduce again what has 
been said or proclaimed before. Hence letters, 
characters, &c., are arranged in all the perfection 
they possibly can be, to show how certain lan- 
guage has been spoken by the original author. 
Now, to reproduce by reading, the reading should 
be so perfectly hke the original, that no caie 
standing out of sight could tell the reading from 
the first time the language was spoken,*' 

This is illustrated by the highest authority at 
hand ; "I have heard as gocd readers read, and 

i.GfC. 



100 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

RS poor readers, as almost any one in this region 
If I Lave not heard as many, I have had a 
chance to hear nearly the extreme in variety. 
Horace Greeley ought to have been a good read- 
ei. Certainl}'' but few, if an}^, ever knew every 
word of the English language at a glance more 
readily than he did, or knew the meaning of 
every mark of punctuation more clearly ; but he 
could not read proper. ' But how do you know ? * 
says one. From the fact, I heard him in the 
same lecture dehver or produce remarks in his 
own particular way, that, if the}' had been pub- 
lished properly in print, a proper reader would 
have rei^roduced them again the same way. In 
the midst of those remarks IVIr. Greeley took up 
a paper, to reproduce by reading part of a speech 
that some one else had made ; and his reading 
did not sound much more like the man that first 
read or made the speech than the c^aiter of a 
nail-factory sounds like a weU-delivered speech 
Xow, the fault was not because Mr. Greeley did 
tot know how to read as well as almost any man 
Aat ever lived, if not quite : but in his youth hf 



A CHARACTER STUDY. IJl 

learned to read wrong ; and, as it is ten times 
harder to unlearn any thing than it is to learn it, 
he, like thousands of others, could never stop to 
unlearn it, but carried it on through his whole 
life." 

"Whether a reader would be thanked for repro- 
ducing one ?f Horace Greelej^'s lectures as he 
dehvered it is a question that cannot detain us 
here ; but the teaching that he ought to do so, I 
think, would please Mr. Greeley. 

The first driblets of professional tourists and 
summer boarders who arrived among the Adiron- 
dack Mountains a few years ago found Old 
Phelps the chief and best guide of the region 
Those who were eager to throw off the usages of 
civilization, and tramp and camp in the wilder- 
ness, could not but be well satisfied with the 
aborigmal appearance of this guide ; and when 
he led off into the woods, axe in hand, and a 
auge canvas sack upon his shoulders, they seemed 
to be following the Wandering Jew. The oou« 
tents of this sack would have furnished a modern 
Industrial exhibition, — provisions cooked and 



102 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

raw, blankets, maple-sugar, tin-ware, clothing, 
pork, Incliau-meal, flour, coflee, tea, &c. Ptelpg 
was the ideal guide : he knew ever}^ foot of the 
pathless forest ; he knew all wood-craft, aU the 
signs of the weather, or, what is the same thing, 
how to make a Delphic prediction about it. 
He was fisheiman and hunter, and had been the 
comi'ade of sportsmen and explorers ; and his 
enthusiasm for the beauty and sublimity of the 
region, and for its untamable wildness, amounted 
to a passion. He loved his profession ; and yet 
it very soon appeared that he exercised it with 
reluctance for those who had neither ideahty, nor 
love for the woods. Their presence was a profa- 
nation amid the scenery he loved. To guide 
into his private and secret haunts a party that 
had no appreciation of their loveliness disgusted 
liim. It was a waste of his time to conduct flip- 
pant young men and giddy girls who made a 
noisy and irreverent lark of the expedition. And, 
for their part, they did not appreciate the benefit 
of being accompanied by a poet and a philoso* 
pher. They neither understood nor valued hit 



A CHARACTER STUDY. 103 

special knowledge and his shrewd obsei-vations : 
jhey didn't even like his shiill voice ; his quaiDt 
talk bored them. It was true, that, at this 
period, Phelps had lost something of the activity 
of his youth ; and the habit of contemplative sit- 
ting on a log and talldng increased with the 
infirmities induced by the hard life of the woods- 
man. Perhaps he would rather talk, either about 
the woods-life or the various problems of exist- 
ence, than cut wood, or busy himself in the 
drudgery of the camp. His critics went so far 
as to say, '' Old Phelps is a fraud." They would 
have said the same of Socrates. Xantippe, who 
never appreciated the world in which Socrates 
hved, thought he was lazy. Probably Socrates 
could cook no better than Old Phelps, and no 
doubt went " gumming " about Athens with very 
;iltle care of what was in the pot for dinner. 

If the sumiticr visitors measured Old Phelps, 
he also measured them by his own standards. 
He used to write out what he called " short-faced 
d^criptionn " of his comrades in the woods, 
•B-hich were cever so flattering as true. It was 



104 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

curious to see how the various quahties which art 
esteemed in society appeared in his eyes, looked 
at merely in theu' relation to the hmited world he 
knew, and judged by their adaptation to the 
primitive life. It was a much subtler comparison 
than tliat of the ordinary guide, who rates his 
tra\eller by his ability to endure on a march, to 
carry a pack, use an oar, hit a mark, or sing a 
song. Phelps brought his people to a test of 
their naturalness and sincerity, tried by contact 
with the verities of the woods. If a person 
failed to appreciate the woods, Phelps had no 
opinion of him or his culture ; and j^et, although 
he was perfectly satianed with his own philosophy 
of life, worked out by close observation of nature 
and study of the Tri-bune. he was always eager 
for converse with superior minds, — with those 
who had the advantage of travel and much read- 
ing, and, above all, with those who had any origi« 
na]. '' speckerlation." Of all the society he was 
ever permitted to enjoy, I think he prized most 
that of Dr. Bushnell. The doctor enjoyed the 
quaint and first-hand observations of the oW 



A CHARACTER STUDY. 105 



»\^oodsman, and Phelps found new worlds opea 
to him in the wide ranges of the doctor's mind. 
They talked by the hour upon all sorts of themes, 
— the growth of the tree, the habits of wilO. 
animals, the migration of seeds, the succession 
of oak and pine, not to mention theology, and 
the mysteries of the supernatural. 

I recall the bearing of Old Phelps, when, several 
years ago, he conducted a party to the summit of 
Mount Marcy by the way he had " bushed out.*' 
This was his mountain, and he had a peculiar 
sense of ownership in it. In a wa}^, it was holy 
ground ; and he would rather no one should go on 
it who did not feel its sanctity. Perhaps it was a 
sense of some divine relation in it that made him 
always speak of it as '' Mercy." To him this 
ridiculously dubbed Mount Marcy was always 
'' Mount 2vlercy.'' By a like effort to soften the 
personal offensiveness of the nomenclature of 
this region, he invariably spoke of Dix's Peak, 
one of the southern peaks of the range, t>.2 
■' Dixie. '* It was some time since Phelps hua- 
lelf had visited his mountaiiL ; and, as he pushed 



106 IN THE WILDEllNESS. 

on through the miles of forest, we noticed a kind 
of eagerness in the old man, as of a lover going 
to a rendezvous. Along the foot of the moun- 
tain flows a clear trout-stream, secluded and un- 
disturbed in those awful sohtudes, which is the 
''Mercy Brook" of the old woodsman. That 
day when he crossed it, in advance of his com- 
pany, he was heard to say in a low voice, as if 
greeting some object of which he was sh^^l}' fond, 
"So, little brook, do I meet you once more?" 
and when we were well up the mountain, and 
emerged fi-om the last stunted fringe of vegeta- 
tion upon the rock-bound slope, I saw Old Phelps, 
who was still foremost, cast himself upon the 
ground, and heard him cry, with an enthusiasm 
that was intended for no mortal ear, " I'm with 
you once again ! " His great passion very rarely 
found expression in any such theatrical burst. 
The bare summit that day was swept by a fier«e, 
cold wind, and lost in an occasional chilling 
cloud. Some of the party, exhausted by the 
climb, and shivering in the rude wind, wanted ik 
5rc kindled and a cup of tea made, and though' 



A CHARACTER STUDY. 107 

this Mie guide's business. Fire and tea were far 
enough from his thought. He had withdraw! 
himself quite apart, and wrapped in a ragged 
blanket, still and silent as the rock he stood on, 
was gazing out upon the wilderness of peaks. 
The view from Marcy is peculiar. It is without 
softness or relief. The narrow valleys are only 
dark shadows ; the lakes are bits of broken mir- 
ror. From horizon to horizon there is a tumultu- 
ous sea of biUows turned to stone. You stand 
upon the highest billow ; you command the situa- 
tion ; you have surprised Nature in a high creative 
act ; the mighty primal energy has only just be- 
come repose. This was a supreme hour to Old 
Phelps. Tea! I beheve the boys succeeded in 
'iindhng a fire ; but the enthusiastic stoic had no 
reason to complain of want of appreciation in the 
rest of the party. When we were descending, he 
told us, with mingled humor and scorn, of a party 
of ladies he once led to the top of the mountain 
on a still day, who began immediately to tails 
about the fashions ! As he related tlie scene, 
stopping and facing us in the trail, nis mild, far- 



i08 IN TEE WILDERNESS 

in eves came to the front, and his voice rose with 
his language to a kind of scream. 

" Why, there they were, right before the great- 
est view they ever saw, talkin' about the 
fashions! '* 

Impossible to convey the accent of contempt 
in which he pronounced the word "fashions," 
and then added, with a sort of regretful bitter* 
ness, — 

** I was a great mind to come down, and leave 
'em there." 

In common with the Greeks, Old Phelps per- 
sonified the woods, mountains, and streams. 
They had not only personality, but distinctions of 
sex. It was something beyond the characteriza- 
tion of the hunter, which appeared, for instance, 
when he related a fight with a panther, in such 
expressions as, "Then Mr. Panther thought he 
would see what he could do," &c. He was in 
"imaginative sjnnpathy" with aU wild things. 
The afternoon we descended Marcy, we went 
vvfay to the west, through the primeval forests 
toward Avalanche and Golden, and followed th« 



A CHARACTER STUDY. 109 

course of the charming Opalescent. When we 
reached the leaping stream, Phelps exclaimed, — 

"Here's little Miss Opalescent ! '* 

*' Why don't you say Mr. Opalescent?" some 
one asked. 

''Oh, she's too pretty!" Ana too pretty she 
was, with her foam- white and rainbow dress, and 
her downfalls, and fountain-like uprising. A be- 
witching young person we found her all that sum- 
mer afternoon. 

This sylph-like person had little in conunou 
with a monstrous lady whose adventures in the 
wilderness Phelps was fond of relating. She 
was built something on the plan of the mountains, 
and her ambition to explore was equal to her 
size. Phelps and the other guides once suc- 
ceeded in raising her to the top of Marcy ; but 
the feat of getting a hogshead of molasses up 
there would have been easier. In attempting to 
give us an idea of her magnitude that n gAt, as 
we sat in the forest camp, Phelps hesitated a 
moment, while he cast his eye around tlie woods ; 
'* Waal, there ain't no tree \ " 



110 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

It is only by recalling fragmentary remarks 
and incidents that I can put the reader in pos- 
session of the peculiarities of mj^ subject; and 
this involves the wrenching of things out of theii 
natural order and continuity, and introducing 
them abruptly, — an abruptness illustrated by the 
remark of "Old Man Hoskins'* (which Phelps 
liked to quote) , when one day he suddenly slipped 
down a bank into a thicket, and seated himself 
in a wasps' nest: "I hain't no business here; 
but here I be!" 

The first time we went into camp on the Upper 
Ausable Pond, which has been justly celebrated 
as the most prettily set sheet of water in the re- 
gion, we were disposed to build our shant}^ on 
the south side, so that we could have in full view 
the Gothics and that lovehest of mountain con- 
tours. To our surprise, Old Phelps, whose senti- 
mental weakness for these mountains we knew, 
opposed this. His favorite camping-ground was 
on the north side, — a pretty site in itself, but 
with no special view. In order to enjoy the lovely 
mountains, we should be obliged to row out int« 



A CHARACTER STUDY. Ill 

the lake : we wanted them alwa3^s before om 
ejxs, — at sunrise and sunset, and in the bli^ze 
of noon. With dehberate speech, as if weighing 
om- arguments and disposing of them, he repKed, 
"Waal, now, them Gothics ain't the kinder 
eoener}^ jou want ter Jiog down ! *' 

It was on quiet Sunda3^s in the woods, or in 
talks by the camp-fire, that Phelps came out as 
the philosopher, and commonly contributed the 
light of his observations . Unfortunate marriages . 
and marriages in general, were, on one occasion, 
the subject of discussion ; and a good deal of 
darkness had been cast on it by various speakers ; 
when Phelps suddenly piped up, from a log where 
he had sat silent, almost invisible, in the shadow 
and smoke, — 

'* Waal, now, when you've said all there is to 
be biid, marriage is mostly for disciphne.'* 

DiscipUne, certainl}^, the old man had, m one 
Yiay or another; and years of solitary com- 
muning in the forest had given him, perhaps, a 
childlike insight into spiritual concerns. YvTieth- 
er he had formulated any c^'eed or what faith he 



112 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

had, I never knew. Keene Valley had a reputa* 
tion of not ripening Christians any more success 
frilly than maize, the season there being short; 
and on our first visit it was said to contain but 
one Bible Christian, though I think an accurate 
census disclosed three. Old Phelps, who some- 
times made abrupt remarks in trying situations, 
was not included in this census ; but he was the 
disciple of supernaturahsm in a most charming 
form. I have heard of his opening his inmost 
thoughts to a lady, one Sunday, after a noble 
sermon of Robertson's had been read in the 
cathedral stillness of the forest. His experience 
was entirely first-hand, and related with uncon- 
sciousness that it was not common to all. There 
was nothing of the mystic or the sentimentalist, 
only a vivid realism, in that nearness of God of 
which he spoke, — "as near sometimes as those 
trees,'* — and of the holy voice, that, in a 'time 
of irward struggle, had seemed to him to come 
from the depths of the forest, saying, " Poor 
loui, I am the way.'* 
In later years there was a *' revival " in Keent 



A CHARACTER STUDY. 113 

Valley, the result of which was a number of 
young " converts/' whom Phelps seemed to re- 
gard as a veteran might raw recruits, and to have 
his doubts what sort of soldiers they would make. 

" Waal, Jimmy," he said to one of them, 
*^ you've kindled a pretty good fire with hght 
wood. That's what we do of a dark night in the 
woods, you know ; but we do it just so as we can 
look around and find the solid wood: so now 
put on your solid wood." 

In the Sunday Bible-classes of the period Phelps 
was a perpetual anxiety to the others, who followed 
closely the printed lessons, and beheld with alarm 
his discursive efforts to get into freer air and light. 
His remarks were the most refreshing part of the 
exercises, but were outside of the safe path into 
which the others thought it necessary to win him 
from his " speckerlations." The class were one 
day on the v^ses concerning "God's word" 
being " ^\Titten on the heart," and were keeping 
close to the shore, under the guidance of 
"Barnes's Notes," when Old Phelps made a dive 
to the bottom, and remarked thatheh-ad " thought 



114 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

a good deal about the expression, ^ God's word 
written on the heart,' and had been asking him- 
self how that was to be done ; anc suddenly il 
occurred to him (having been much interested 
lately in watching the work of a photographer), 
that, when a photograph is going to be taken, all 
that has to be done is to put the object in posi- 
tion, and the sun makes the picture ; and so he 
rather thought that all we had got to do was to 
put our hearts in place, and God would do the 
writin'." 

Phelps's theology, like his science, is first-hand. 
In the woods, one day, taUi ran on the Trinity as 
being nowhere asserted as a doctrine in the Bible 
and some one suggested that the attempt to pack 
these great and fluent mysteries into one word 
must always be more or less unsatisfactory. 
'*re-es," droned Phelps: "I never could see 
much speckerlation in that expression the Trinity. 
Why, the^^'d a good deal better say Legion.** 

Tlie sentiment of the man about nature, or hw 
poetic sensibihty, was frequently not to be (US' 
tf-Dguished fi'om a natural reho^ion, and was alway 



A CHARACTER STUDY. 115 

tinged with the clevoutness of Wordsworth's 
i^erse. Climbing slowly one day up the Bal- 
con}^, — he was more than usually calm and slow, 
- — he espied an exquisite fragile flower in tha 
crevice of a rock, in a very lonely spot. 

"It seems as if," he said, or rather dreamed 
out, — "it seems as if the Creator had kept some- 
thing just to look at himself." 

To a lady whom he had taken to Chapel Pond 
(a retu'ed but rather uninteresting spot) , and who 
expressed a little disappointment at its tameness, 
saying, 

"Why, Mr. Phelps, the principal charm of 
this place seems to be its loneliness," — 

"Yes," he replied in gentle and lingering 
tones, " and its nativeness. It lies here just 
where it was born." 

Rest and quiet had infinite attractions for him. 
A secluded opening in the woods was a "calm 
epot." He told of seeing once, or rather being 
i«, a circular rainbow. He stood on Indian Head, 
overlooking the Lower Lake, so that he saw the 
wMe bow in the sky v-nd the lake, and seemed to 



H6 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

be in the midst of it ; " only at one place there 
was an indentation in it, where it rested on the 
lake, just enough to keep it from rolling off.'' 
This "resting" of the sphere seemed to give 
liim great comfort. 

One Indian-summer morning in October, some 
ladies found the old man sitting on his doorstep, 
smoking a short i)ipe. He gave no sign of rec" 
ognition of their approach, except a twinkle of 
the eye, being evidently quite in harmony with 
the peaceful day. They stood there a full minute 
before he opened his mouth : then he did not rise, 
but slowly took his pipe from his mouth, and said 
in a dreamy way, pointing towards the brook, — 

"Do 3'ou see that tree?" indicating a maple 
almost denuded of leaves, which lay like a j^ellow 
garment cast at its feet. " I've been watching 
that tree all the morning. There hain't been a 
breath of wind : but for hom-s the leaves have 
been falling, faUing, just as you see them now ; 
and at last it's pretty much bare." And after a 
pause, p(;nsively : " Waal, I suppose its hour hac 



A CHARACTER STUDY. Ill 

This contemplative habit of Old Phelps !9 
•wholly unappreciated by his neighbors •, but it 
has been indulged in no inconsiderable part of 
his life. Kising after a time, he said, " Now 1 
want you to go with me and see my golden city 
I've tallied so much about." He led the way to 
a Irll-outlook, when suddenly, emerging from the 
forest, the spectators saw revealed the winding 
valley and its stream. He said quietly, " There 
is my golden city." Far below, at their feet, 
they saw that vast assemblage of birches and 
" popples," yellow as gold in the brooding noon- 
day, and slender spires rising out of the glowing 
mass. Without another word, Phelps sat a long 
time in silent content : it was to him, as Bunyan 
says, " a place deskous to be in." 

Is this philosopher contented with what life has 
brought him ? Speaking of money one day, when 
we had asked him if he should do dLfferentl3^ if 
he had his life to Mve over again, he said, '' Yes, 
but not about money. To have had hours such 
fts I have had in these mountains, and with such 
D-cn as Dr. Bushnell and Dr. Shaw and Mr 



113 AV THE WILDERNESS. 

Twlchell, and others I could name, is worth all 
the money the world could give/' He read cbd,r« 
acter very well, and took in accurately the boy 
natm-e. "Tom" (an irrepressible, rather over- 
done specimen) , — " Tom's a nice kind of a boy ; 
but he's got to come up against a snubbin'-post 
one ol these da^^s." — "Boys!" he once said: 
" you can't git boys to take any kinder notice of 
scenery. I never yet saw a boy that would look 
a second time at a sunset. Now, a girl willso?ne- 
times; but even then it's instantaneous, — comes 
and goes like the sunset. As for me," still speak- 
ing of scenery, "these mountains about here, 
that I see every da}^, are no more to me, in one 
sense, than a man's farm is to him. What mostly 
interests me now is when I see some new freak 
or shape in tjie face of Nature." 

In literati-re it may be said that Old Phelps 
prefers the best in the very limited range that 
has been open to him. Tennyson is his favorite 
among poets ; an affinity explained by the fact 
that they are both lotos-eaters. Speaking of a 
tectur^-yoom talk of lilr, Beecher's which he haa 



A VHARACTER STUDY \\% 

read, he said, " It filled my cup about as full as 
I callerlate to have it : there was a good deal of 
truth .n it, and some poetry ; waal, and a little 
spice too. We've got to have the spice, you 
know.'' Ho admired, for different reasons, a 
lecture by Greeley that he once heard, into which 
bo much knowledge of various kinds was crowded, 
that he said he " made a reg'lar gobble of it." 
He was not without discrimination, which he ex- 
ercised upon the local preaching when nothing 
better offered. Of one sermon he said, "The 
man began way back at the creation, and just 
preached right along down; and he didn't saj 
nothing, after all. It just seemed to me as if h<i 
was trjin' to git up a kind of a fix-up." 

Old Phelps used words sometimes like alge 
braic signs, and had a habit of making one t 
duty for a season together for aU occasion! 
" Speckerlation " and " callerlation " and " fix 
up " are specimens of words that were prolific 
in expression. An unusual expression, or an 
unusual article, would be characterized as a " kinr? 
»f % scientific literary git-up.* 



»20 m THE WILDERNESS. 



"What is the programme for to-morrow?" 1 
once asked him. "Waal, I callerlate, if they 
rig up the callerlation they callerlate on, we'll go 
to the Boreas." Starting out for a day's tramp 
in the woods, he would ask whether we wanted 
to talce a " reg'lar walk, or a random scoot," — 
the latter being a plunge into the pathless forest 
When he was on such an expedition, and became 
entangled in dense brush, and maybe a network 
of " slash " and swamp, he was like an old wiz 
ard, as he looked here and there, seeking a way, 
peering into the tangle, or withdrawing from a 
thicket, and muttering to himself, " There ain't no 
speckerlation there." And when the Tvay became 
altogether inscrutable, — " Waal, this is a reg'lar 
random scoot of a rigmarole." As some one re- 
marked, "The dictionary in his hands is hke clay 
in the hands of the potter." A petrifaction was 
a " kind of a hard- wood chemical git-up." 

There is no conceit, we are apt to say, like that 
v.orn of isolation from the world, and there aie 
no puch conceited people as those who liave hve<J 
tU their lives in the woods. Phelps was, however 



J CHARACTER STUDY. 121 



Qnsv^phisticated in his until the advent of stran- 
gers into his life, who brought in literal are and 
various other disturbing influences. I am sorry 
to say that the effect has been to take off some- 
thing of the bloom of his simplicity, and lo ele- 
vate him into an oracle. I supi^ose this is inevi- 
table as soon as one goes into print ; and Phelps 
has gone into print in the local papers. Me \as 
been bitten with the hterary "git-up." Justly 
regarding most of the Adirondack hterature as a 
*' perfect fizzle," he has himself projected a work, 
and written much on the natural history of his 
region. Long ago he made a large map of the 
mountain country ; and, until recent surveys, it 
was the only one that could lay any claim to ac- 
curacy. His history is no doubt original in form, 
and unconventional in expression. Like most of 
he writers of the seventeenth century, and the 
court ladies and gentlemen of the eighteenth cen- 
tur}^, he is an independent speller. Writing of 
his work on the Adirondacks, he says, " If I 
should ever Uve to get this wonderful thing writ- 
^n, I expect it will show one thing, if no more ; 



l22 IX THE WILDERNESS. 

and that is, that every thing has an opposite. ] 
expect to show in this that literature has an oppo- 
site, if I do not show any thing els. We could 
not enjo}" the blessings and happiness of riteous- 
ness if we did not know innicutj^ was in the 
world : in fact, there would be no riteousness with- 
out innicut3\" Writing also of his great enjoy- 
ment of being in the woods, especially since he 
has had the society there of some people he 
names, he adds, "And since I have Literature, 
Siance, and Art all spread about on the green 
moss of the mountain woods or the gravell banks 
of a cristle stream, it seems like finding roses, hon- 
eysuckels, and \iolets on a crisp brown cliff in 
December. You know I don't believe much in 
the religion of seramony ; but any riteous thing 
that has hfc and spirit in it is food for me." I 
must not neglect to mention an essay, continued 
in several numbers of his local paper, on '' The 
Growth of the Tree,*' in which he demolishes the 
theory of ]\[r. Greeley, whom he calls "one of 
the best vegetable philosophers," about " growth 
'viihout seed." He treats of the office of sap 



A CHARACTER STUDY. 123 

» ■ ■ ' 

*' All trees have some kind of sap and some kind 
of operation of sap flowing in their season/' — 
the dissemination of seeds, the processes of 
growth, the power of heahng wounds, the pro- 
portion of roots to branches, &c. Speaking of 
the latter, he saj^s, " I have thought it would be 
one of the greatest curiosities on earth to see a 
thrifty growing maple or elm, that had grown on a 
deep soil interval to be two feet in diameter, to be 
raised clear into the air with every root and fibre 
down to the minutest thread, all entirely cleared 
of soil, so that every particle could be seen in its 
natural position. I think it would astonish even 
the wise ones." From his instinctive sympathy 
with nature, he often credits vegetable organism 
with "instinctive judgment." ''Observation 
teaches us that a tree is given powerful instincts, 
which would almost appear to amount to judg- 
ment in some cases, to provide tox }ts own wants 
and necessities." 

Here our study must cease. When the primi- 
tive man comes into literature, lie is no longer 
primitive. 



VI. 



CAMPING OUT. 




T seems to be agreed that civilization is 
kept up oul}' b}" a constant effort : Nature 
claims its own speedil}^ when the effort is 
relaxed. If 3^ou clear a patch of fertile ground 
in the forest, uproot the stumps, and plant it, 
year after 3^ear, in potatoes and maize, you say 
you have subdued it. But, if you leave it for a 
season or two, a kind of barbarism seems to steal 
out upon it from the circling woods ; coarse grass 
and brambles cover it ; bushes spring up in a 
wild tangle ; the raspberry and the blackberry 
flower and fruit, and the humorous bear feeds 
upon them. The last state of that ground is 
worse than the first. 
Perhaps the cleared spot is called Epbesus. 

124 



CAMPING OUT. 125 



There is a splendid city on the plain ; there are 
temples and theatres on the hills ; the commerce 
of the world seeks its port ; the luxury of the 
Orient flows through its marble streets. You are 
there one day when the sea has receded : the 
plain is a pestilent marsh ; the temples, the 
theatres, the lofty gates, have sunken and cmm- 
bled, and the wild-brier runs over them ; and, as 
you grow pensive m the most desolate place in 
the world, a bandit lounges out of a tomb, and 
oflers to relieve jou of all that which creates 
artificial distinctions in society. The higher the 
civihzation has risen, the more abject is the des- 
olation of barbarism that ensues. The most 
melancholy spot in the Adirondacks is not a 
tamarack-swamp, where the traveller wades in 
moss and mire, and the atmosphere is composed 
of equal active parts of black-flies, mosquitoes, 
and midges, it is the village of the Adirondack 
Iron -Works, where the streets of gaunt houses are 
falling to pieces, tenantless ; the factory- wheels 
nave stopped ; the furnace? are in ruins ; the iron 
tnd wooden machinery is strewn about in helpless 



126 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

detachment ; and heaps of charcoal, ore, and 
Blag, proclaim an arrested industr3^ Beside this 
deserted village, even Calamity Pond, shallow, 
Bedgy, with its ragged shores of stunted firs, 
and its melancholy shaft that marks the spot 
where the proprietor of the iron-works accident- 
ally shot himself, is cheerful. 

The instinct of barbarism that leads people 
periodically to throw aside the habits of civihza- 
tion, and seek the freedom and discomfort of the 
woods, is explicable enough ; but it is not so 
easy to understand why this passion should be 
strongest in those who are most refined, and most 
trained in intellectual and social fastidiousness. 
Philistinism and shoddy do not hke the woods, 
unless it becomes fashionable to do so ; and then, 
as speedily as possible, they introduce their arti- 
ficial luxuries, and reduce the hfe in the wilder- 
ress to the vulgarity of a well-fed jncnic. It ia 
they who have strewn the Adirondacks with 
papeL' :ollars and tin cans. The real enjoyment 
of camping and tramping in the woods lies in a 
tetum to primitive conditions of lodging, dress 



CAMPING OUT. 127 



and food, in as total an escape as may be from 
the requirements of civilization. And it remains 
to be explained why this is enjoyed most by those 
who are most highly civilized. It is wonderful 
to see how easily the restraints of society fall 
off. Of course it is not true that courtesy 
depends upon clothes with the best people ; but, 
with others, behavior hangs almost entirely upon 
dress. Many good habits are easily got rid of 
in the woods. Doubt sometimes seems to be felt 
whether Sunday is a legal hohday there. It be- 
comes a question of casuistry with a clergjTnau 
whether he may shoot at a mark on Sunday, if 
none of his congregation are present. He in- 
tends no harm : he only gratifies a curiosity to 
gee if he can hit the mark. Where shaU he draw 
the hue ? Doubtless he might throw a stone at a 
chipmunk, or shout at a loon. Might he fire at a 
mark with an air-gun that makes no noise ? He 
will not fish or hunt on Sunday (although he is 
no more liliely to catch any thing that day than 
on any other) ; but may he eat trout that the 
guide has caught on Suiday, if the guide swears 



128 m THE WILDERNESS. 



he caught them Saturday night ? Is there such t 
thing as a vacation in religion ? How much of 
our virtue do we owe to inherited habits ? 

I am not at all sure whether this desire to 
camp outside of civilization is creditable to hu- 
man nature, or otherwise. We hear sometimes 
that the Turk has been merely camping for four 
centmies in Europe. I suspect that many of us 
are, after all, really camping temporarily in civil- 
ized conditions ; and that going into the wilder- 
ness is an escape, longed for, into our natural 
and preferred state. Consider what this " camp- 
ing out '* is, that is confessedly so agreeable to 
people most delicately reared. I have no desire 
to exaggerate its delights. 

The Adirondack wilderness is essentially un- 
broken. A few bad roads that penetrate it, a few 
wlting wagons that traverse them, z few barn- 
like boarding-houses on the edge of the forest, 
where the boarders are soothed by patent coffee, 
and stimulated to unnatural gayety by Japan tea. 
and experimented on by unique cookery, do little 
to destroy the savage fascination of the region 



CAMPING OUT. 12? 

In half aii hour, at any point, one can put him" 
self into solitude and every desirable discomfort. 
The party that covets the experience of the camp 
comes down to primitive conditions of dress and 
equipment. There are guides and porters to 
carry the blankets for beds, the raw pro^asions, 
and the camp equipage ; and the motley party of 
the temporarily decivihzed files into the woods, 
and begins, perhaps by a road, perhaps on a 
trail, its exhilarating and weary march. The 
exhilaration arises partly from the casting aside 
of restraint, partly from the adventure of explo- 
ration ; and the weariness, from the interminable 
toil of bad walldng, a heavy pack, and the grim 
monotony of trees and bushes, that shut out all 
prospect, except an occasional glimpse of the sky. 
Mountains are painfully climbed, streams forded, 
lonesome lakes paddled over, long and muddy 
** carries" traversed. Fancy this party the vie 
llm of political exile, banished by the law, and a 
more sorrowful march could not be imagined; 
but the vo-untary hardship becomes pleasure, 
and it is undeniable that the spiiits of the party 
nse as the difficulties .iicreas©. 



ISO IN THE WILDERNESS. 

For this straggling and stumbling band th€ 
world is young again : it has come to the begin- 
ning of things ; it has cut loose from tradition, 
and is free to make a home anj^where : the move- 
ment has all the promise of a revolution. AW 
this wginal freshness in^dtes the primitive in- 
stincts of play and disorder. The free range 
of the forests suggests endless possibihties of 
exploration and possession. Perhaps we are 
treading where man since the creation never 
trod before ; perhaps the waters of this bubbling 
spring, which we deepen by scraping out the 
decaj^ed leaves and the black earth, have never 
been tasted before, except by the wild denizens 
of these woods. We cross the trails of lurldng 
animals, — paths that heighten our sense of 
seclusion from the world. The hammering of 
the infrequent woodpecker, the call of the lonely 
bird, the drumming of the solitary partridge, — 
all these sounds do but emphasize the lonesome- 
ness of nature. The roar of the mountain brook, 
dashing over its bed o.'* pebbles, rising out of the 
ravint and spreading, as it were, a mist of sound 



CAMPING OUT. 131 



through all the forest (continuous beating waves 
fchat have the ihythm of eternity in them), and 
the fitful movement of the air-tides through the 
balsams and firs and the giant pines, — how these 
grand symphonies shut out the little exaspera- 
tions of our vexed hfe ! It seems easy to begin 
life over again on the simplest terms. Probably 
it is not so much the desire of the congregation 
to escape from the j^reacher, or of the preacher 
to escajpe from himself, that drives sophisticated 
people into the wilderness, as it is the uncon- 
quered craving for primitive simplicity, the revolt 
against the everlasting dress-parade of our civili- 
zation. From this monstrous pomposity even 
the artificial rusticity of a Petit Trianon is a 
i>ehef. It was only human nature that the jaded 
Frenchman of the regency should run away to 
the New World, and live in a forest-hut with an 
Indian squaw ; although he found little satisfao- 
tion in his act of heroism, unless it was talked 
about at Versailles. 

When our trampers come, late in the after- 
iKK)n, to the bank of a lovely lake where they 



132 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

pui-pose to enter the primitive life, every thing is 
waiting for them in virgin expectation. There ia 
% httle promontor}^ jutting into the lake, and 
sloping down to a sandj^ beach, on which the 
waters idly lapse, and shoals of red-fins and 
shiners come to greet the stranger ; the forest 
is untouched by the axe ; the tender gi-een 
sweeps the water's edge ; ranks of slender fira 
are marshalled by the shore ; clumps of white- 
birch stems shine in satin purity among the ever- 
gi'eens ; the boles of giant spruces, maples, and 
oaks, hfting high their crowns of foliage, stretch 
away in endless galleries and arcades ; through 
the shifting leaves the sunshine falls upon the 
brown earth ; overhead are fragments of blue 
sky ; under the boughs and in chance openings 
appear the bluer lake and the outhne of the 
gracious mountains. The discoverers of this 
paradise, which they have entered to destroy, 
note the babbling of the brook that flows close at 
hand ; they hear the splash of the leaping fish 
tiiey listen to the sweet, metallic song of the 
eveoing thrush, and the chatter of the rea 



CAMPING OUT. 133 



BqtiiiTel, who angrily challenges their right to be 
there. But the moment of sentiment passes. 
This party has come here to eat and to sleep, 
and not to encourage Nature in her poetic atti- 
tudinizing. 

The spot for a shanty is selected. This side 
shall be its opening, towards the lake ; and in 
front of it the fire, so that the smoke shall drift 
into the hut, and discourage the mosquitoes ; 
yonder shall be the cook's fire and the path to 
the spring. The whole colony bestu' themselves 
in the foundation of a new home, — an enterprise 
that has all the fascination, and none of the 
danger, of a veritable new settlement in the wil- 
derness. The axes of the guides resound in the 
echoing spaces ; great trunks fall with a crash ; 
vistas are opened towards the lake and the moun- 
tains. The spot for the shanty is cleared of 
underbrush ; forked stakes are driven into the 
gi'ound, cross-pieces are laid on them, and polea 
sloping back to the ground. In an incredible 
space of time there is the skeleton of a house, 
Vhich is entuely open in front. The roof anq 



134 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

Bides must be covered. For this pm-pose the 
truDks of great spruces are skinned. The woa.l- 
man rims the bark near the foot of the tree, aid 
again six feet above, and slashes it perpendicu- 
larly ; then, with a blunt stick, he crowds off this 
thick hide exactl}" as an ox is sldnned. It needs 
but a few of these skins to cover the roof; and 
they make a perfectly water-tight roof, except 
when it rains. Meantime, busy hands have 
gathered boughs of the spruce and the feathery 
balsam, and shingled the ground underneath the 
shanty for a bed. It is an aromatic bed : in 
theory it is elastic and consohng. Upon it are 
spread the blanlvets. The sleepers, of all sexes 
and ages, are to he there in a row, their feet to 
the fire, and their heads under the edge of the 
sloping roof. Nothing could be better contrived. 
The fire is in front : it is not a fii-e, but a confla- 
gration — a vast heap of green ^ogs set on fire — 
of pitch, and split dead-wood, and crackling bal- 
earns, raging and roaring. B}' the time twihght 
falls, the cook has prepared supper. Every thing 
&as been cooked in a tin pail and a skillet,— 



CAMPING OUT. 135 



potatoes, tea, pork, mutton, slapjacks. You 
wonder how every thing could have been prepared 
in so Itw utensils. When jom eat, the wonder 
ceases : every thing might have been cooked in 
one pail. It is a noble meal ; and nobly is it 
disposed of by these amateur savages, sitting 
about upon logs and roots of trees. Never were 
there such potatoes, never beans that seemed to 
have more of the bean in them, never such cmly 
pork, never trout with more Indian-meal on 
them, never mutton more distinctly sheepy ; and 
the tea, drunk out of a tin cup, with a lump of 
maple-sugar dissolved in it, — it is the sort of 
tea that takes hold, lifts the hair, and disposes 
the drinker to anecdote and hilariousness. There 
is no deception about it : it tastes of tannin and 
spruce acd creosote. Every thing, in short, has 
the flavor of the wilderness and a free life. It is 
idyllic. And yet, with all our sentimentalit}^, 
there is nothing feeble about the cooking. The 
Blapjacks are a solid job of work, made to last, 
and not go to pieces in a person's stomach like 
a trivial bun : we might record on them, in cunei- 



i36 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

forn: characters, our incipient civilization; and 
future generations would doubtless turn them up 
as Acadian bricks. Good, robust victuals are 
what the primitive man wants. 

Darkness falls suddenly. Outside the ring of 
light from our conflagration the woods are black. 
There is a tremendous impression of isolation 
and lonesomeness in our situation. We are the 
prisoners of the night. The woods never seemed 
so vast and mj'sterious. The trees are gigantic. 
There are noises that we do not understand, — 
m3'sterious winds passing overhead, and rambhng 
in the great galleries, tree-trunks grinding against 
each other, undefinable stirs and uneasinesses. 
The shapes of those who pass into the dimness 
are outhned in monstrous proportions. The 
spectres, seated about in the glare of the fire, 
tiUi about appearances and presentiments and 
rehgion. The guides cheer the night with bear* 
fights, and catamount encounters, and frozen-to- 
death experiences, and simple tales of gi-eat 
prolixity and no po^jit, and jokes of primitive 
Uicidit}'. "We hear catamounts, and the stealthy 



CAMPING OUT, 131 



tread of things in the leaves, and the hooting of 
owls, and, when the moon rises, the laughter of 
the loon. Every thing is strange, spectral, fasci- 
nating. 

By and by we get our positions in the shanty 
for the night, and arrange the row of sleepers. 
The shanty has become a smoke-house b}^ thia 
time : waves of smoke roll into it from the fire. 
It is only by lying down, and getting the head 
well under the eaves, that one can breathe. No 
one can find her " things ; " nobody has a pillow. 
At length the row is laid out, with the solemn 
protestation of intention to sleep. The wind, 
shifting, drives away the smoke. Good- night is 
said a hundred times ; positions are re-adjusted, 
more last words, new shifting about, final re- 
marks ; it is all so comfortable and romantic ; 
and then silence. Silence continues for a minute. 
The fire flashes up ; all the row of heads is lifted 
up simultaneously to watch it ; showers of sparks 
sail aloft into the blue night ; the vast vault of 
greenery is a fairy spectacle. How the spa.ka 
mount and twinkle and disappear Jike tropical 



188 IN THE WILDERNESS, 

fire-flies, and all the leaves murmur, and clap 
their hands ! Some of the sparks do not go out •. 
we see them flaming in the sk}^ when the flame 
of the fire has died down. Well, good-night, 
good-night. More folding of the arms to sleep ; 
more grumbling about the hardness of a hand- 
bag, or the insufficiency of a pocket-handkerchief, 
for a pillow. Good-night. Was that a remark? 
— something about a root, a stub in the ground 
sticking into the back. " You couldn't he along 
a hair?" — "Well, no: here's another stub." 
It needs but a moment for the conversation to 
become general, — about roots under the shoulder, 
stubs in the back, a ridge on which it is impos- 
sible for the sleeper to balance, the non-elasticity 
of boughs, the hardness of the ground, the heat, 
.he smoke, the chilly air. Subjects of remarks 
multiply. The whole camp is awake, and chat- 
tering hke an a^dary. The owl is also awake ; 
bat the guides who are asleep outside make more 
noise than the owls. Water is wanted, and ia 
hand ed about in a dipper. Everybody is yawn- 
ing ; everybody is now determined to go to sleef 



CAMPING OUT. 139 

\i good earnest. A last good-night. There ia 
4n appalling silence. It is interrupted in the 
aiost natm-al way in the world. Somebody has 
^ot the start, and gone to sleep. He proclaims 
Che fact. He seems to have been brought up on 
the seashore, and to know how to make all the 
deep-toned noises of the restless ocean. He is 
also like a war-horse ; or, it is suggested, lilie a 
saw-horse. How malignantly he snorts, and 
breaks off short, and at once begins again in 
another key ! One head is raised after another. 

"Who is that?" 

" Somebody punch him.'* 

" Turn him over." 

" Keason with him." 

The sleeper is turned over. The turn was a 
mistake. He was before, it appears, on his most 
agreeable side. The «amp rises in indignation. 
The sleeper sits up lu bewilderment. Before he 
tan go off again, two or three others have pre- 
ceded him. They are all ahke. You never can 
judge what a person is when he is awake. There 
%1'e here half a dozen distui'bers of the peace wbo 



140 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

Bhoiild be put in solitary confinement. At mid- 
night, when a philosopher crawls out to sit on a 
log by the fire, and smoke a pipe, a duet in tenor 
and mezzo-soprano is going on in the shanty, 
with a chorus always coming in at the wrong time. 
Those who are not asleep want to know why the 
smoker doesn't go to bed. He is requested to 
get some water, to throw on another log, to see 
what time it is, to note whether it looks hke rain. 
A buzz of conversation arises. She is sm-e she 
heard something behind the shanty. He says it 
is all nonsense. " Perhaps, however, it might be 
a mouse." 

* ' Merc}^ ! Ai-e there mice ? ' ' 

''Plent3^" 

'' Then that's what I heard nibbhng by my 
head. I sha'n't sleep a wink ! Do they bite? " 

"No, they nibble; scarcely ever take a full 
bite out.'* 

" It's hoiTid ! " 

Towards morning it grows chilly; the guides 
have hit the fire go out ; the blankets will slip 
'.lown. Anxietj^ begins to be expressed about th« 
dawn. 



CAMPING OUT 141 



'* What time does the sun rise? " 

" Awful early. Did you sleep? *' 

" Not a wink. And 3"0u? " 

" In spots. I'm going to dig up this root as 
Boon as it is light enough." 

" See that mist on the lake, and the light just 
coming on the Gothics ! I'd no idea it was so 
cold : all the first part of the night I was roasted." 

" What were they tallying about all night? " 

When the party crawls out to the early break- 
fast, after it has washed its faces in the lake, it 
is disorganized, but cheerful. Nobody admits 
much sleep ; but everybody is refreshed, and de- 
clares it dehghtful. It is the fresh air all night 
that invigorates ; or maj^be it is the tea, or the 
slapjacks. The guides have erected a table of 
spruce bark, wiiu benches at the sides ; so that 
breakfast is taken in form. It is served on tin 
p!at«3s and oak chips. After breakfast begins the 
day's work. It may be a mountain-climbing ex- 
pedition, or rowing and angling in the lake, or 
fishing for trout in some stream two or three miles 
distant. Nobody can stir far from camp without 



142 m THE WILDERNESS, 

It guide. Hammocks are swung, bowers are 
built, novel-reading begins, worsted work ap- 
pears, cards are shuffled and dealt. The day 
passes in absolute freedom from responsibility to 
one's self. At night, when the expeditions re- 
tiu*n, the cam]3 resumes its animation. Adven- 
tures are recounted, every statement of the 
narrator being disputed and argued. Everybody 
Las become an adept in wood-craft ; but nobody 
credits his neighbor with like instinct. Society 
getting resolved into its elements, confidence is 
gone. 

Whilst the hilarious party are at supper, a drop 
or two of rain falls. The head guide is appealed 
to. Is it going to rain? He says it does rain. 
But will it be a rainy night? The guide goes 
down to the lake, looks at the sk}", and concludes, 
that, if the wind shifts a p'int more, there is no 
telling what sort of weather we shall have. Mean- 
time the drops patter thicker on the leaves over^ 
head, and the leaves, in turn, pass the water down 
to the table ; the sky darkens ; the wind rises ; 
there is a kind of shiver in the woods ; and W6 



CAMPING OUT. 143 

fccud away into the shanty, taking the remains of 
our supper, and eating it as best we can. The 
rain increases. The fire sputters and fumes. All 
the troes are dripping, dripping, and the ground 
is wet. We cannot step out-doors without get- 
ting a drenching. Like sheep, we are penned in 
the little hut, where no one can stand erect. 
The rain swirls into the open front, and wets 
the bottom of the blankets. The smoke drives 
in. We curl up, and enjoy ourselves. The 
guides at length conclude that it is going to be 
damp. The dismal situation sets us all into good 
spirits ; and it is later than the night before when 
we crawl under our blankets, sure this time of a 
sound sleep, lulled by the storm and the rain re- 
sounding on the bark roof. How much better off 
we are than many a shelterless wretch ! We are 
us Hnug as dry herrings. At the moment, how- 
ever, of dropping off to sleep, somebody unfortu- 
nately notes a drop of water on his face ; this is 
followed by another drop ; in an instant a stream 
is established. He moves his head to a diy place. 
Scarcely has he done so, when he feels a damp- 



Hi IN THE WILDERNESS. 

ness in his back. Reaching his hand outside, 
he finds a puddle of water soaking through his 
blacJiet. By this time, somebody inquii-es if 
it is possible that the roof leaks. One man has 
a stream of water under him ; another says it is 
coming into his ear. The roof appears to be a 
discriminating sieve. Those who are dry see no 
need of such a fuss. The man in the corner 
spreads his umbrella, and the protective measure 
is resented by his neighbor. In the darkness 
there is recrimination. One of the guides, who 
is summoned, suggests that the rubber blankets 
be passed out, and spread over the roof. The in- 
mates dislike the proposal, saying that a shower- 
bath is no worse than a tub-bath. The rain con- 
tinues to soak down. The fii-e is only half alive. 
The bedding is damp. Some sit up, if they can 
find a dry spot to sit on, and smoke. Heartlosa 
observ^ations are made. A few sleep. And the 
night wears on. The morning oj^ens cheerlesSk 
The sky is still leaking, and so is the shanty. 
The guides bring in a half-cooked breakfast. The 
roof is patched up. There are reviving signs of 



CAMPING OUT, 145 



breaking away, delusive signs that create mo 
mentaiy exhilaration. Even if the storm clears, 
the woods are soaked. There is no chance of 
B'.irring. The world is only ten feet square. 

This life, without responsibility or clean clothes, 
may continue as long as the reader desu-es. 
There are those who would like to live in this free 
fashion forever, taking rain and sun as heaven 
pleases ; and there are some souls so constituted 
that they cannot exist more than three days with- 
out their worldly baggage. Taldng the party 
altogether, from one cause or another it is likely 
to strike camp sooner than was intended. And 
the stricken camp is a melancholy sight. The 
woods have been despoiled ; the stumps are ugly ; 
the bushes are scorched; the pine-leaf-strewn 
ear.h is trodden into mire ; the landing looks Mke 
a cattle-ford ; the ground is littered with all the 
unsightly debris of a hand-io-hand hfe ; the dis- 
mantled shanty is a shabby object ; the charred 
aid blackened logs, where the fire blazed, sug- 
gest the extinction of family life. Man has 
^rrought his usual wrong upon Nature, and he can 



146 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

save his self-respect only by moving to virgin 
forests. 

And move to them he will, the next season, if 
not this. For he who has once experienced the 
fascination of the woods-life never escapes its en- 
ticement : in the memory nothing remains but its 
charm. 




VII. 



A WILDERNESS ROMANCE. 




T the south end of Keene Valley, in the 
Adirondacks, stands Noon Mark, a 
shapely peak thirty-five hundred feet 
above the sea, which, with the aid of the sun, 
tells the Keene people when it is time to eat 
dinner. From its summit you look south into a 
vast wilderness basin, a great stretch of forest 
little trodden, and out of whose bosom 3'ou can 
hear from the heights on a still day the loud 
murmur of the Boquet. This basin of unbroken 
green rises away to the south and south-east into 
the rocky heights of Dix's Peak and Nipple Top, 
— the latter a local name which neither the 
mountain nor the fastidious tourist is able to 
shake off. Indeed, so long as the mountain 

147 



148 IN THE WILDERNESS. 



keeps its present shape as seen from the south- 
ern lowlands, it cannot get on without this name. 

These two mountains, which belong to the 
great sj'stem of which Marc}' is the giant centre^ 
and are iii the neighborhood of five thousand feet 
high, on the southern outposts of the great 
mountains, form the gate-posts of the pass into 
the south country. This opening between them 
is called Hunter's Pass. It is the most elevated 
and one of the wildest of the mountain passes. 
Its summit is thirtj'-five hundred feet high. In 
former 3'ears it is presumed the hunters occa- 
sionally followed the game through ; but latterly 
it is rare to find a guide who has been that way, 
and the tin-can and paper-collar tourists have 
not 3'et made it a runwa3\ This seclusion is due 
not to an}^ inherent difficulty of travel, but to the 
fact that it lies a httle out of the way. 

We went through it last summer ; making our 
way into the jaws from the foot of the great 
eUdes on Dix, keeping along the ragged spurs of 
the mountain through the virgin forest. Th« 
pass is narrow, walled in on each side by preci 



A WILDERNESS ROMANCE. 149 

pices of granite, and blocked up with bowlders 
and fallen trees, and beset with pitfalls in the 
roads ingeniously covered with fair-seeming 
moss. When the climber occasionally loses 
Bight of a leg in one of these treacherous holes, 
and feels a cold sensation in his foot, he learns 
that he has dipped into the sources of the Bo- 
quet, which emerges lower down into falls and 
rapids, and, recruited by creeping tributaries, 
goes brawling through the forest basin, and at 
last comes out an amiable and boat-bearing 
stream in the valley of Elizabeth Town. From 
the summit another rivulet trickles away to the 
south, and finds its way through a frightful tama- 
rack swamp, and through woods scarred by ruth- 
less lumbering, to Mud Pond, a quiet body of 
water, with a ghastl}^ fringe of dead trees, upon 
which people of grand intentions and weak 
vocabulary are trpng to fix the name of Elk 
Lake. The descent of the pass on that side is 
■jrecipitous and exciting. The way is in the 
stream itself; and a considerable portion of the 
J.'stance we swung ourselves down the faces of 



150 IN THE WILDERNESS. 



considerable falls, and tumbled down cascades. 
The descent, however, was made easy b^ the 
fact tliat it rained, and ever}^ footstep was peld- 
ing and slipper}'. Why sane people, often 
church-members respectably connected, will sub- 
ject themselves to this sort of treatment, — be 
wet to the skin, bruised by the rocks, and flung 
about among the bushes and dead wood until the 
most necessary part of their apparel hangs in 
shreds, — is one of the delightful mysteries of 
these woods. I suspect that every man is at 
heart a roving animal, and likes, at intervals, to 
revert to the condition of the bear and the 
catamount. 

There is no trail through Hunter's Pass, 
which, as I have intimated, is the least fre- 
quented portion of this wilderness. Yet we 
were surprised to find a well-beaten path a con- 
siderable portion of the way and wherever a path 
is possible. It was not a mere deer's runway : 
these are found ever3'where in the mountains. 
It is trodden by other and larger animals, and 
(S, no doiibt, the highway of beasts. It bear* 



A WILDERNESS ROMANCE. 151 

marks of having been so for a long period, and 
probably a period long ago. Large animals are 
not common in these woods now, and you seldom 
meet any thing fiercer than the timid deer and 
the gentle bear. But in days gone by Hunter's 
Pass was the highway of the whole caravan of 
animals who were continually going backwards 
and forwards, in the aimless, roaming way that 
beasts have, between Mud Pond and the Boquet 
Basin. I think I can see now the procession of 
them between the heights of Dix and Nipple 
Top ; the elk and the moose shambling along, 
cropping the twigs ; the heavy bear lounging by 
with his exploring nose ; the frightened deer 
trembhng at every twig that snapped beneath 
his little hoofs, intent on the hly-pads of the 
pond ; the raccoon and the hedgehog, sidUng 
along ; and the velvet-footed panther, insouciant 
and conscienceless, scenting the path with a 
curious glow in his eye, or crouching in an over- 
hanging tree ready to drop into the procession at 
the right moment. Nignt and day, 3^ear after 
fear, I see them going by, watched by the red 



152 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

fox and the comfortably clad sable, and grinned 
at by the black cat, — the innocent, the \icious, 
the timid and the savage, the shy and the bold, 
the chattering slanderer and the screaming 
prowler, the industrious and the peaceful, the 
tree-top critic and the crawling biter, — just as 
it is elsewhere. It makes me blush for my 
species when I thinly of it. This charming 
society is nearly extinct now : of the larger ani- 
mals there only remain the bear, who minds his 
own business more thoroughly than any person I 
know, and the deer, who would like to be friendly 
with men, but whose winning face and gentle 
ways are no protection from the savageness of 
man, and who is treated with the same unpitjing 
destruction as the snarhng catamount. I have 
road in history that the amiable natives of His- 
paniola fared no better at the hands of the brutal 
Spaniards than the fierce and warlike Caribs. 
As society is at present constituted in Christian 
eountri^, I would rather for my own security be 
Ik cougar than a fawn. 
There is not much of romantic interest Id the 



4 WILDERNESS ROMANCE. 153 



Adirondacks. Out of the books of daring trav- 
ellers, nothing. I do not know that the Keene 
Valley has any history. The mountains always 
Btood here, and the Au Sable, flowing now in 
shallows and now in rippKng reaches over the 
sands and pebbles, has for ages filled the air with 
continuous and soothing sounds. Before the 
Vermonters broke into it some three-quarters of 
a century ago, and made meadows of its bottoms 
and sugar-camps of its fringing woods, I suppose 
the red Indian lived here in his usual discomfort, 
and was as restless as his successors, the summer 
boarders. But the streams were full of trout 
then, and the moose and the elk left their broad 
tracks on the sands of the river. But of the 
Indian there is no trace. There is a mound in 
the valley, much like a Tel in the country of 
Bashan beyond the Jordan, that may have been 
built by some pre-historic race, and may contain 
treasure and the seated figure of u preserved 
chieftain on his slow way to Paradise,. What the 
gentle and acco.nphsned race of the Mound- 
Builders should want in this savage region wliere 



154 7.V THE WILDERNESS. 

'.he frost kills the early potatoes and stunts the 
scanty oats, I do not know. I have seen no 
trace of them., except this Tel, and one other 
slight relic, which came to light last summer, and 
is not enough to found the history of a race 
upon. 

Some workingmen, getting stone from the hill- 
side on one of the httle plateaus, for a house- 
cellar, discovered, partl}^ embedded, a piece of 
pottery unique in this region. With the unerring 
instinct of workmen in regard to antiquities, they 
thrust a crowbar through it, and broke the bowl 
into several pieces. The joint fragments, how- 
ever, give us the form of the dish. It is a bowl 
about nine inches high and eight inches across, 
made of red clay, baked but not glazed. The 
bottom is round, the top flares into four corners, 
and the rim is '-udely but rather artistically orna- 
mented with criss-cross scratches made when the 
ciay was soft. The vessel is made of clay not 
found about here, and it is one that the Indiana 
formerly hving here could not form. Was it 
brought here by roving Indians who may have 



A WILDERNESS ROMANCE. 155 

» ■ 

made an expedition to the Ohio ; was it passed 
from tribe to tribe ; or did it belong to a race 
that occupied the country before the Indian, and 
who have left traces of their civilized skill in pot- 
tery scattered all over the continent ? 

If I could establish the fact that this jar was 
made by a pre-historic race, we should then have 
four generations in this lovel}^ valley : — the amia- 
ble Pre-Historic people (whose gentle descend- 
ants were probably killed by the Spaniards in the 
West Indies) ; the Red Indians ; the Keene Flat- 
ers (from Vermont) ; and the Summer Boarders, 
to say nothing of the various races of animals 
who have been unable to live here since the ad' 
vent of the Summer Boarders, the valley 'ceing 
not productive enough to sustain both. This 
last incursion has been more destructive to the 
noble serenity of the forest than all the pre- 
ceding. 

But we are wandering from Hunter's Pass, 
The western walls of it are formed by the preci- 
pices of Nipple Fop, not so striking nor so bare 
as the great slides of Dix which glisten in the 



156 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

Bun like silver, but rough and repelling, and con- 
sequently alluring. I have a great desire to 
Bcale them. I have alwaj^s had an unreasonable 
wish to explore the rough summit of this crabbed 
hill, which is too broken and jagged for pleasure 
and not high enough for glor3\ This desire was 
stimulated by a legend related hj our guide that 
night in the Mud Pond cabin. The guide had 
never been through the pass before ; although he 
was familiar with the region, and had ascended 
Nipple Top in the winter in pursuit of the sable. 
The story he told doesn't amount to much, — • 
none of the guides* stories do, faithfull}^ reported, 
— and I should not have believed it if I had not 
had a good deal of leisure on m.y hands at the 
time, and been of a willing mind, and I ma}^ 
say in rather of a starved condition as to any 
romance in this region. 

The guide said then — and he mentioned it 
casually, in reply to our inquiries about ascend- 
ing the mountain — that there was a cave high 
up among the precipices on the south-east side 
Df Nipple Top. He scarcely volunteered the 



A WILDERNESS ROMANCE. 151 

Information, and witk seeming reluctance gave 
us any particulars about it. I always admire this 
art b}^ which the accomplished stor^^-teller lets 
his listener drag the reluctant tale of the marvel- 
lous from him, and makes j^ou in a manner re- 
sponsible for its improbability. If this is well 
managed, the listener is alwaj's eager to beheve a 
great deal more than the romancer seems willing 
to tell, and alwaj^s resents the assumed reserva- 
tions and doubts of the latter. 

There were strange reports about this cave 
when the old guide was a boy, and even then its 
very existence had become legendary. Nobody 
knew exactly where it was, but there was no 
doubt that it had been inhabited. Hunters in 
the forests south of Dix had seen a light late at 
night twinlding through the trees high up the 
mountain, and now and then a ruddy glare as 
from the flaring-up of a furnace. Settlers were 
few in the wilderness then, and all the inhabitants 
were well known. If the cave was inhabited, it 
must be by strangers, and by men who had somo 
lecret purpose in seeking this seclusion and 



158 IN TEE WILDERNESS. 



eluding observation. If suspicious charactera 
were seen about Port Henr}-, or if any such 
landed from the steamers on the shore of Lake 
Champlain, it was impossible to identifj' tbem 
with these invaders who were never seen. Their 
not being seen did not, however, prevent the 
growth of the belief in their existence. Little 
indications and rumors, each trivial in itself, be- 
came a mass of testimony that could not be dis- 
posed of because of its very indefiniteness, but 
which appealed strongly to man's noblest faculty, 
his imagination, or credulit}^ 

The cave existed ; and it was inhabited by men 
who came and went on mj'sterious errands, and 
transacted their business by night. What this 
band of adventurers or desperadoes lived on, 
how they conveyed their food through the track- 
less woods to their high eyrie, and what could 
induce men to seek such a retreat, were questions 
discussed, but never settled. They might be ban- 
ditti ; but there was nothing to plunder in these 
savage wilds, and, in fact, robberies and raids 
either in the settlements of the hills or the did 



A WILDERNESS ROMANCE. 15S 

tant lake shore were unknown, lii another age, 
these might have been hermits, holy men who 
had retired from the world to feed the vanity of 
their godliness in a spot where they were subject 
neither to interruption nor comparison ; they 
would have had a shrine in the cave, and an 
image of the Blessed Virgin, with a lamp alwaj^s 
burning before it and sending out its mellow light 
over the savage waste. A more probable notion 
was that they were romantic Frenchmen who had 
grown weary of vice and refinement together, — 
possibly princes, expectants of the throne, Bour- 
bon remainders, named Williams or otherwise, 
unhatched eggs, so to speak, of kings, who had 
withdrawn out of observation to wait for the 
next turn-over in Paris. Frenchmen do suoh 
things. If they were not Frenchmen, they 
might be horse-thieves or criminals, escaped from 
justice or from the friendly state-prison of New 
York. This last supposition was, however, more 
violent than the others, or seems so to us in this 
day of grace. For what well-brought-up Ne^ 
V ork criminal would be so '.isane as to run awaV 



160 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

_: — ____,.. . ■— ^ 

from his political friends the keepers, from the 
easily-had companionship of his pals outside, and 
from the society of his criminal law^-er, and, in 
short, to put himself into the depths of a wilder- 
ness out of which escape, when escape was 
desired, is a good deal more diflScult than it is 
out of the swarming jails of the Empire State? 
Besides, how foolish for a man, if he were a 
really hardened and professional criminal, having 
established connections and a regular business, 
to run away from the governor's pardon, which 
might have difficulty in finding him in the craggy 
bosom of Nipple Top ! 

This gang of men — there is some doubt 
whether they were accompanied by women — • 
gave little evidence in their appearance of being 
escaped criminals or expectant kings. Their 
movements were m^'sterious but not necessarily 
violent. If their occupation could have been 
discovered, that would have furnished a clew tc 
Iheir true character. But about this the strangers 
Were as close as mice. If anj^ thing could betray 
tUfsm, it was the steady light from the cavern, and 



A WILDERNESS ROMANCE. Ifil 

Its occasional ruddy flashing. This gave rise to 
the opinion, which was strengthened by a good 
many indications equally conclusive, that the cave 
was the resort of a gang of coiners and counter- 
feiters. Here they had their furnace, smelting- 
pots, and dies ; here they manufactured those 
spurious quarters and halves that their confidants, 
who were pardoned, were circulating, and which 
a few honest men were " nailing to the counter.*' 
This prosaic explanation of a romantic situa- 
tion satisfies all the requirements of the known 
facts, but the lively imagination at once rejects it 
as unworthy of the subject. I think the guide 
put it forward in order to have it rejected. The 
fact is, — at least, it has never been disproved, 
— these sL angers whose movements were veiled 
belonged to that dark and mysterious race whose 
presence anywhere on this continent is a nest-egg 
of romance or of terror. They were Spaniards! 
You need not say buccaneers, you need not say 
go^i-.Wnters, you need not saj swarthy adven 
turers even : it is enough to say Spaniards ! 
There is no tale of mystery and fanaticism and 



162 IN TEE WILDERNESS. 



daring I would not believe if a Spaniard is the 
hero of it, and it is not necessary either that he 
Bhould have the high-sounding name of Bobadilla 
or Ojeda. 

Nobody, I suppose, would doubt this story if 
the cave were in the mountains of Hispaniola or 
in the Florida Keys. But a Spaniard in the 
Adirondacks does seem misplaced. Well, there 
would be no romance about it if he were not mis- 
placed. The Spaniard, anywhere out of Spain, 
has always been misplaced. What could draw 
him to this loggy and remote region ? There are 
two substances that will draw a Spaniard from 
any distance as certainly as sugar will draw 
wasps, — gold and silver. Does the reader begin 
to see light? There was a rumor that silver 
existed in these mountains. I do not know 
where the rumor came from, but it is necessary 
to account for the Spaniards in the cave. 

How long these greed3^ Spaniards occupied the 
cave on Mpple Top, is not known, nor how much 
silver they found, whether they found an}", or 
whether they secretlj^ took away all there was is 



A WILDERNESS ROMANCE. 163 

the hills That they discovered silver in con- 
Biderable quantities, is a fair inference from the 
length of their residence in this mountain, and 
the extreme care the}^ took to guard their secret, 
and the mystery that enveloped all their move- 
ments. What they mined, they smelted m the 
cave and carried off with them. 

To my imagination nothing is more impressive 
than the presence in these savage wilds of these 
polished foreigners and accomplished metal- 
lurgists, far from the haunts of civilized man, 
leading a life of luxury and revelry in this almost 
inaccessible cavern. I can see them seated 
about their roaring fire, which revealed the rocky 
ribs of their den and sent a gleam over the dark 
forest, eating venison-pasty and cutting deep 
into the juicj^ haunch of the moose, quaffing deep 
liraughts of red wine from silver tankards, and 
then throwing themselves back upon divans, and 
lazily puffing the fragrant Havana. After a day 
of toil, what more natural, and what more prob- 
ftble for a Spaniard? 

Does the reader think these inferences not 



164 IN THE WILDERNEiiiS. 

warranted hy the facts ? He does not know th€ 
facts. It is true that our guide had never him- 
self personally \4sited the cave, but he haa 
always intended to hunt it up. His information 
in regard to it comes from his father, who was a 
mightj^ hunter and trapper. In one of his expe- 
ditions over Nipple Top, he chanced upon the 
cave. The mouth was half concealed by under- 
growth. He entered, not without some appre- 
hension engendered by the legends which make 
it famous. I think he showed some boldness in 
venturing into such a place alone. I confess, 
that, before I went in, I should want to fire a 
GatUng gun into the mouth for a little while, in 
order to rout out the bears which usually dwell 
there. He went in, however. The entrance 
was low ; but the cave was spacious, not large, 
i»ut Dig enough, with a level floor and a vaulted 
ceiling. It had long been deserted, but that it 
was once the residence of highl}' civilized beings 
there could be no doubt. The dead brands in 
the centre were the remains of a fire that could 
not have been kindled by wild beasts, and the 



A WILDERNESS ROMANCE. 165 

bones scattered about had been scientifically 
dissected and handled. There were also rem- 
nants of furniture and pieces of garments scat- 
tered about. At the farther end, in a fissure of 
the rock, were stones regularly built up, the 
remains of a larger fire, — and what the hunter 
did not doubt was the smelting-furnace of the 
Spaniards. He poked about in the ashes, but 
ound no silver. That had all been carried 
away. 

But what most provoked his wonder in this 
rude cave w£.s a chaii' ! This was not such a 
seat as a woodman might knock up with an axe, 
with rough body and a seat of woven splits, but 
a manufactured chair of commerce, and a chair, 
too, of an unusual pattern and some elegance. 
This chair itself was a mute witness of luxury 
and m3^stery. The chair itself might hare been 
accounted for, though I don't know how ; but 
upon the back of the chair hung, as if the owner 
had carelessly flung it there before going out an 
hour before, a man's waistcoat. This waistcoat 
Beemed to him of foreign make nnd pecuJiai 



166 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

Btjie, but what endeared it to him was its row 
of metal buttons. These buttons were of silver ! 
I forget now whether he did not saj^ they were 
of silver coin, and that the coin was Spanish. 
But I am not certain about this latter fact, and 
I wish to cast no air of improbability over my 
narrative. This rich vestment the hunter carried 
away with him. This was all the plunder his 
expedition afforded. Yes : there was one other 
article, and, t© my mind, more significant than 
the vest of the hidalgo. This was a short and 
stout crowbar of iron ; not one of the long crow- 
bars that farmers use to pry up stones, but a 
short handy one, such as 3'ou would use in dig* 
ging silver-ore out of the cracks of rocks. 

This was the guide's simple story. T asked 
him what became of the vest and the buttons, 
and the bar of iron. The old man wore the vest 
until he wore it out ; and then he handed it over 
to the boys, and they wore it in turn till thej 
n^ore it out. The buttons were cut off, and kept 
fis curiosities. They were about the cabin, and 
Jie children had them to play with. The guid« 



A WILDERNESS ROMANCE. 167 

distinctly remembers plajdng with them ; one of 
them he kept for a long time, and he didn't 
know but he could find it now, but he guessed 
it had disappeared. I regretted that he had not 
treasured this slender verification of an interest- 
ing romance, but he said in those daj's he never 
paid much attention to such things. Lately he 
lias turned the subject over, and is sorr}^ that his 
father wore out the vest and did not bring away 
the chair. It is his steady purpose to find the 
cave some time when he has leisure, and capture 
the chair, if it has not tumbled to pieces. But 
about the crowbar ? Oh ! that is all right. The 
guide has the bar at his house in Keene Valley, 
and has alwaj^s used it. 

I am happy to be able to confirm this story by 
saving that next day I saw the crowbar, and 
had it in my hand. It is short and thick, and 
the most interesting kind of crowbar. This 
evidence is enough for me. I intend in the 
course of this vacation to search for the cave ; 
and, if I find it, my readers shall know the truth 
about ii, if it destroys the only bit of romance 
connected with these mountains. 



VIII. 



WHAT SOME PEOPLE CALL PLEASURE. 




Y readers were promised an account of 
Spaniard's Cave on Nipple-Top Moun- 
tain in the Adirondacks, if such a cave 
exists, and could be found. There is none but 
negative e\idence that this is a mere cave of the 
imagination, the void fancy of a vacant hour ; 
but it is the dut}' of the historian to present the 
negative testimony of a fruitless expedition in 
search of it, made last summer. I beg leave to 
offer this in the simple language befitting all 
sincere exploits of a geographical character. 

The summit of Mpple-Top Mountain has been 

trodden by few white men of good character: 

it is in the heart of a hirsute wilderness ; it is 

itself a rough and unsocial pile of granite nearly 

168 



Tf/Zir SOME PEOPLE CALL PLEASURE. 169 

h\Q thousand feet high, bristling with a stunted 
and unpleasant growth of firs and balsams, and 
there is no earthly reason why a pei^-son should 
go there. Therefore we went. In the party of 
three there was, of course, a chaplain. The 
guide was Old Mountain Phelps, who had made 
the ascent once before, but not from the north- 
west side, the direction from which we ap- 
proached it. The enthusiasm of this philoso- 
pher has grown with his years, and outlived his 
endurance : we carried our own knapsacks and 
supplies, therefore, and drew upon him for noth- 
ing but moral reflections and a general knowl- 
edge of the wilderness. Our first day's route 
was through the Gill-brook woods and up one of 
its branches to the head of Caribou Pass, which 
separates Nipj)le-Top from Colvin. 

It was about the first of September ; no rain 
had fallen for several weeks, and this heart of 
the forest was as dry as tinder ; a lighted match 
clropped anywhere would start a conflagration. 
This dryness has its advantages : the walking ia 
Improved ; the long heat has expressed all the 



i70 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

Bpicy odors of the cedars and balsams, and the 
woods are filled with a soothing . fragrance ; 
the waters of the streams, though scant and 
clear, are cold as ice ; the common forest chill is 
gone from the air. The afternoon was bright ; 
there was a feeling of exultation and adventure 
in stepping off into the open but pathless forest ; 
the great stems of deciduous trees were mottled 
with patches of sunlight, which brought out 
upon the variegated barks and mosses of the old 
trunks a thousand shifting hues. There is noth- 
ing like a primeval wood for color on a sunny 
daj^ The shades of green and brown are in- 
finite ; the dull red of the hemlock bark glows in 
the sun, the russet of the changing moose-bush 
becomes brilliant ; there are silvery openings 
here and there ; and everywhere the columns 
rise up to the canopy of tender green which sup- 
ports the intense blue sky and holds up a part of 
it from falling through in fragments to the fioor 
of the forest. Decorators can learn here how 
Nature dareo to put blue and green in juxtaposi 
tion : she has evidently the, secret of harmonizing 
all the colors. 



WHAT SOME PEOPLE CALL PLEASURE. 171 

The wa}^ as we ascended, was not all through 
open woods ; dense masses of firs were ©wcoun- 
tered, jagged spurs were to be crossed, and the 
going became at length so slow and toilsome that 
we took to the rocky bed of a stream, where 
bowlders and flumes and cascades offered us 
suflScient variety. The deeper we penetrated, 
the greater the sense of savageness and solitude ; 
in the silence of these hidden places one seems 
to approach the beginning of things. We 
emerged from the defile into an open basin, 
formed by the curved side of the mountain, and 
stood silent before a waterfall coming down out 
of the sky in the centre of the curve. I do not 
know any thing exactly like this fall, which some 
poetical explorer has named the Fairy-Ladder 
Falls. It appears to have a height of something 
like a hundred and fifty feet, and the water falls 
obliquely across the face of the cliff from left 
to right in short steps, which in the moonlight 
might seem like a veritable ladder for fairies. 
Our impression of its height was confirmed by 
elimbing the very steep slope at its side sojae 



172 IN THE WILDERNESS. 



three or four hundred feet. At the top we found 
the stream flowing over a broad bed of rock, 
like a street in the wilderness, slanting up still 
towards the sky, and bordered b}^ low firs and 
balsams, and bowlders completely covered with 
moss. It was above the world and open to the 
sky. 

On account of the tindery condition of the 
woods we made our fire on the natural pavement, 
and selected a smooth place for our bed near by 
on the flat rock, with a pool of limpid water at 
the foot. This granite couch we covered with 
the dry and springy moss, which we stripped off 
in heavy fleeces a foot thick from the bowlders. 
First, however, we fed upon the fruit that was 
ofl*ered us. Over these hills of moss ran an ex- 
quisite vine with a tiny, ovate, green leaf, bear- 
ng small, delicate berries, oblong and white as 
wax, having a faint flavor of wintergreen and 
the slightest acid taste, the very essence of the 
wilderness ; fairy food, no doubt, and too refined 
for palates accustomed \o coarser viands. There 
Oiust exist somewhere sinless women who could 



WHAT SOME PEOPLE CALL PLEASURE, 173 

eat these berries without being reminded of the 
lost purity and delicacy of the primeval senses. 
Every year I doubt not this stainless berry 
ripens here, and is unplucked by an}^ knight of 
tlie Holy Grail who is worthy to eat it, and keeps 
aMv^e, in the prodigality of nature, the tradition 
of the unperverted conditions of taste before the 
fall. We ate these berries, I am bound to say, 
with a sense of guilty enjoyment, as if they had 
been a sort of shew-bread of the wilderness, 
though I cannot answer for the chaplain, who is 
by virtue of his oflSce a little nearer to these 
mysteries of nature than I. This plant belongs 
to the heath family, and is first cousin to the 
blueberr}^ and cranberry. It is commonly called 
the creeping snowberry, but I like better its 
official title of chio^enes, — the snow-born. 

Our mossy resting-place was named the Bridal 
Chamber Camp, in the vEnthusiasm of the hour, 
after darkness fell upon the woods and the stars 
came out. We were two thousand five hundred 
feet above the common world. We lay, as if 
were, on a shelf in the sky, with a basin of 



174 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

illimitable forests below us and dim mountain- 
passes in the far horizon. 

And as we lay there courting sleep which the 
blinking stars refused to shower down, our phi- 
losopher discoursed to us of the principle of fire, 
which he holds, with the ancients, to be an inde- 
pendent element that comes and goes in a mys- 
terious manner, as we see flame spring up and 
vanish, and is in some way vital and indestructi- 
ble, and has a mysterious relation to the source 
of all things. "That flame," he says, "you 
have put out, but where has it gone?" We 
could not say, nor whether it is any thing like the 
spirit of a man which is here for a little hour, and 
then vanishes away. Our own philosophy of the 
correlation of forces found no sort of favor at 
that elevation, and we went to sleep leaving the 
principle of fire in the apostolic category of " any 
other creature." 

At dayhght we were astir ; and, having pressed 
the principle of fire into our service to make a 
pot of tea, we carefully extinguished it or sent it 
into another place, and addressed ourselves tc 



WEAT SOME PEOPLE CALL PLEASURE. 175 



the climb of something over two thousand feet. 
The arduous labor of scaling an Alpine peak has 
a compensating glory ; but the dead lift of our 
bodies up Nipple-Top had no stimulus of this 
sort. It is simply hard work, for which the 
strained muscles only get the approbation of the 
individual conscience that drives them to the task. 
The pleasure of such an ascent is difficult to ex- 
plain on the spot, and I suspect consists not so 
much in positive enjoyment as in the dehght the 
mind experiences in tyrannizing over the body. 
I do not object to the elevation of this mountain, 
nor to the uncommonly steep grade by which it 
attains it, but only to the other obstacles thrown 
in the way of the climber. All the slopes of 
Nipple-Top are hirsute and jagged to the last 
degree. Granite ledges interpose ; granite bowl- 
der? seem to have been dumped over the sides 
T«itL no more attempt at arrangement than in a 
rip-rap wall ; the slashes and windfalls of a cen- 
tury present here and there an almost impenetra- 
ble chevalier des cirln^es; and the steep sides 
bristle with a mass of think balsams, with dead, 



176 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

" ■ -<— a 

protruding spikes, as un^ieldiDg as iron stakes. 
The mountain has had its own way forever, an<J 
is as untamed as a wolf; or rather the elements, 
the frightful tempests, the frosts, the heavy 
snows, the coaxing sun, and the avalanches have 
had their way with it until its surface is in hope- 
less confusion. We made our way verj^ slowly ; 
and it was ten o'clock before we reached what 
appeared to be the summit, a ridge deeply 
covered with moss, low balsams, and blueberry- 
bushes. 

I say, appeared to be ; for we stood in thick fog 
or in the heart of clouds which limited our dim 
view to a radius of twenty feet. It was a warm 
and cheerful fog, stirred by little wind, but mov- 
ing, shifting, and boiling as by its own volatile 
nature, rolling up black from below and dancing 
in silvery splendor overhead. As a fog it could 
not have been improved ; as a medium for view- 
ing the landscape it w^s a failure ; and we lay 
down upon the S3^barite couch of mos^, as in a 
Russian bath, to await revelations. 

We waited two hours without change, exsep' 



WHAT SOME PEOPLE CALL PLEASURE. 17"' 

an occasional hopeful lightness in the fog above, 
and at last the appearance for a moment of the 
spectral sun. Only for an instant was this 
iuminous promise vouchsafed. But we watched 
in intense excitement. There it was again ; and 
this time the fog was so thin overhead that we 
caught sight of a patch of blue sky a yard square, 
across which the curtain was instantly drawn. A 
little wind was stirring, and the fog boiled up 
from the valley caldrons thicker than ever. But 
the spell was broken. In a moment more Old 
Phelps was shouting, "The sun!'* and before 
we could gain our feet there was a patch of sky 
overhead as big as a farm. "See! quick!*' 
The old man was dancing like a lunatic. There 
was a rift in the vapor at our feet, down, down, 
three thousand feet into the forest abyss, and lo ! 
lifthig out of it yonder the tawny side of Dix, — 
<>he vision of a second, snatched away in the 
rolling fog. The i:>lay had just begun. Before 
we could turn, there was the gorge of Caribou 
Pass, savage and dark, visible to the bottom. 
Th^ opening shut as suddenly ; and tnen, looking 



i78 IN THE WILDERNESS. 



over the clouds, miles away we saw the peaceful 
farms of the Au Sable Valley, and in a moment 
more the plateau of North Elba and the sentinel 
mountains about the grave of John Brown. 
These glimpses were as fleeting as thought, and 
instantly we were again isolated in the sea of 
mist. The expectation of these sudden strokes 
of sublimity kept us exultingty on the alert ; and 
yet it was a blow of surprise when the curtain 
was swiftly withdrawn on the west, and the long 
ridge of Colvin, seemingly within a stone's 
throw, heaved up like an island out of the 
ocean, and was the next moment ingulfed. We 
waited longer for Dix to show its shapely peak 
and its glistening sides of rock gashed b}- ava- 
lanches. The fantastic clouds, torn and stream- 
ing, hurried up from the south in haste as if to 
a witch's rendezvous, hiding and disclosing the 
great summit in their flight. The mist boiled up 
from the valley, whirled over the summit where 
we stood, and plunged again into the depths. 
Objects were forming and disappearing, shifting 
ftnd dancing, now in sun and now gone in fog 



WHAT SOME PEOPLE CALL PLEASURE. 179 

and in the elemeatal whirl we felt that we were 
*' assisting" in an original process of creation. 
The sun strove, and his very striving called up 
new vapors ; the wind rent away the clouds, and 
brought new masses to surge about us ; and the 
spectacle to right and left, above and below, 
changed with incredible swiftness. Such glory 
of abyss and summit, of color and form and 
transformation, is seldom granted to mortal eyes. 
For an hour we watched it until our vast moun- 
tain was revealed in all its bulk, its long spurs, 
its abysses and its savagery, and the great ba- 
sins of wilderness with their shining lakes, and 
the giant peaks of the region, were one by one 
disclosed, and hidden and again tranquil in the 
sunshine. 

Where was the cave? There was ample sur- 
face in which to look for it. If we could have 
flitted about, like the hawks that came circling 
round, over tlie steep slopes, the long spurs, the 
jagged precipices, I have no doubt we should 
have found it. But moving about on this moun- 
tain is not a holiday pastime ; and we were chiefly 



•80 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

tnxious to discover a practicable mode of descent 
into 'the great wilderness basin on the south ^ 
which we must traverse that afternoon before 
reaching the hospitable shant}- on Mud Pond. 
It was enough for us to have discovered the 
general whereabouts of the Spanish Cave, and 
we left the fixing of its exact position to future 
explorers. 

The spur we chose for our escape looked 
Bmooth in the distance ; but we found it bristling 
with obstructions, dead balsams set thickly to- 
gether, slashes of fallen timber, and every man- 
ner of woody chaos ; and when at length we 
swung and tumbled off the ledge to the general 
slope, we exchanged only for more disagreeable 
going. The slope for a couple of thousand feet 
was steep enough ; but it was formed of granite 
rocks all moss-covered, so that the footing could 
not be determined, and at short intervals we 
nearl}' went out of sight in holes under the 
treacherous carpeting. Add to this that stems 
of great trees were laid longitudinally and trans 
versely and criss-cross over and among the rocks, 



WHAT SOME PEOPLE CALL PLEASURE. 181 

Rnd the reader can see that a good deal of work 
needs to be done to make this a practicable high- 
way for any thing but a squirrel. 

We had had no water since our daylight break- 
fast : our lunch on the mountain had been moist- 
ened only by the fog. Our thirst began to be 
that of Tantalus, because we could hear the 
water running deep down among the rocks, but 
we could not come at it. The imagination drank 
the living stream, and we realized anew what 
delusive food the imagination furnishes in an 
actual strait. A good deal of the crime of this 
world, I am convinced, is the direct result of the 
unlicensed play of the imagination in adverse 
circumstances. This reflection had nothing to 
do with our actual situation ; for we added to our 
imagination patience, and to our patience long- 
suflering, and probably all the Christian virtues 
would have been developed in us if the descent 
had been long enough. Before we reached the 
bottom of Caribou Pass, the water burst out from 
the rocks in a jlear stream that was as cold aa 
Ice. Shortly after, we struck the roaring brook 



182 IN THE WILDERNESS. 



that issues from the Pass to the south. It is a 
Btream full of character, not navigable even for 
trout in the upper part, but a succession of falls, 
cascades, flumes, and pools, that would dehght 
an artist. It is not an eas}^ bed for ixwy thing 
except water to descend ; and before wo reached 
the level reaches, where the stream flows with a 
murmurous noise through open woods, one of our 
party began to show signs of exhaustion. 

This was Old Phelps, whose appetite had failed 
the day before, — his imagination being in better 
working order than his stomach : he had eaten 
little that da}', and his legs became so groggy 
that he was obhged to rest at short intervals. 
Here was a situation ! The afternoon was wear- 
ing awa)^ We had six or seven miles of un- 
known wilderness to traverse, a portion of it 
ewampy, in which a progress of more than a 
mile an hour is difficult, and the condition of the 
guide compelled even a slower march. What 
shoul(J we do in that lonesome solitude if the 
guide became disabled? We couldn't carry hina 
out could we find our own way out to gel 



WHAT SOME PEOPLE CALL PLEASURE. 188 

assistance? The guide himself had never been 
there before ; and although he knew the general 
direction of our point of egress, and was en- 
tirely adequate to extricate himseif from any 
position in the woods, his knowledge was of that 
occult sort possessed by woodsmen which it is 
impossible to communicate. Our object was to 
strike a trail that led from the Au Sable Pond, 
the other side of the mountain-range, to an inlet 
on Mud Pond. We knew that if we travelled 
south-westward far enough we must strike that 
trail, but how far? No one could tell. If we 
reached that trail, and found a boat at the inlet, 
there would be only a row of a couple of miles 
to the house at the foot of the lake. If no boat 
was there, then we must circle the lake three or 
four miles farther through a cedar-swamp, with 
no trail in particular. The prospect was not 
pleasing. We were short of supplies, for we 
had not expected to pass that night in the 
woot^s. The pleasure of the excursion began to 
develop itself. 
We stumbled on in the general direction 



184 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

marked out, through a forest that began to seem 
endless as hour after hour passed, compelled as 
we were to make long detours over the ridges of 
the foot-hills to avoid the swamp, which sent out 
from the border of the lake long tongues into the 
firm ground. The guide became more ill at every 
Btep, and needed frequent halts and long rests. 
Food he could not eat ; and tea, water, and even 
brandy, he rejected. Again and again the old 
philosopher, enfeebled by excessive exertion and 
illness, would collapse in a heap on the ground, 
an almost comical picture of despair, while we 
stood and waited the waning of the da}^, anc'. 
peered forward in vain for any sign of an open 
country. At every brook we encountered, we 
suggested a halt for the night, while it was still 
light enough to select a camping-place, but the 
plucky old man wouldn't hear of it: the trail 
might be only a quarter of a mile ahead, and 
we crawled on again at a snail's pace. His honor 
as a guide seemed to be at stake ; and, besides, 
he confessed to a notion that his end was near 
and he didn't want to die like a dog in the woods 



WHAT SOME PEOPLE CALL PLEASURE. 



And yet,, if this was his last jovrney, it seemed 
not an inappropriate ending for the old woods- 
man to lie down and give up the ghost in the 
midst of the untamed forest and the solemn 
silences he felt most at home in. There is a 
popular theory, held by civilians, that a soldier 
likes to die in battle. I suppose it is as true 
that a woodsman would like to "pass in his 
chips," — the figure seems to be inevitable,— 
struck down by illness and exposure, in the forest 
soUtude, with heaven in sight and a tree-root for 
his pillow. 

The guide seemed really to fear that, if we did 
not get out of the woods that night, he would 
never go out ; and, yielding to his dogged resolu- 
tion, we kept on in search of the trail, although 
the gathering of dusk over the ground warned us 
that we might easily cross the trail without recog- 
nizing it. We were travelling by the light in the 
upper sky, and by the forms of the tree-stems, 
ivhich every moment grew dimmer. At last the 
end came. We had just felt our way over what 
geemtid to be a little run of water, when the old 



.86 IN THE WILDERNESS. 



man sunk down, remarking, "I might as well 
die here as anywhere," and was silent. 

Suddenl}^ night fell like a blanket on us. We 
could neither sec the guide nor each other. We 
became at once conscious that miles of night on all 
sides shut us in. The sky was clouded over : there 
wasn't a gleam of light to show us where to step. 
Our first thought was to build a fire, which would 
drive back the thick darkness into the woods, 
and boil some water for our tea. But it was too 
dark to use the axe. We scraped together leaves 
and twigs to make a blaze, and, as this failed, 
such dead sticks as we could find by groping 
about. The fire was only a temporary affair, but 
it sufficed to boil a can of water. The water we 
obtained by feeling about the stones of the little 
run for an opening big enough to dip our cup in. 
The supppr to be prepared was fortunately sim- 
ple. It consisted of a decoction of tea and other 
leaves which had got into the pail, and a part of 
a loaf of bread. A loaf of bread which has been 
carried m a knapsack for a couple of days 
bruised and handled and hacked at with a hunt 



WHAT SOME PEOPLE CALL PLEASURE. 187 

» . II ■ 

mg-knife, becomes an uninteresting object. But 
we ate of it with thankfulness, washed it doTMi 
with hot fluid, and bitterly thought of the mor- 
row. Would our old friend survive the night? 
Would he be in any condition to travel in the 
morning? How were we to get out with him or 
without him ? 

The old man lay silent in the bushes out of 
sight, and desired only to be let alone. We 
tried to tempt him with the offer of a piece of 
toast: it was no temptation. Tea we thought 
would revive him : he refused it. A drink of 
brandy would certainly quicken his life : he 
couldn't touch it. We were at the end of our 
resources. He seemed to think, that if he were 
at home, and could get a bit of fried bacon, or a 
piece of pie, he should be all right. We knew 
no more how to doctor him, than if he had been 
a sick bear. He withdrew within himself, i oiled 
himself up, so to speak, in his primitive habits, 
find waited for the healing power of nature, 
before our feeble fire disappeared, we smoothed 
K 'evel place near it for Phelps to lie on, and got 



188 IN THE WILDERNESS. 



him over to it. But it didn't suit : it was too 
open. In fact, at the moment some drops of 
rain fell. Rain was quite outside of our pro- 
gramme for the night. But the guide had an in- 
stinct about it ; and, while we were groping about 
some yards distant for a place where we could lie 
down, he crawled away into the darkness, and 
curled himself up amid the roots of a gigantic 
pine, ver}^ much as a bear would do, I suppose, 
with his back against the trunk, and there passed 
the night comparatively dry and comfortable ; 
but of this we knew nothing till morning, and 
had to trust to the assurance of a voice out of 
the darkness that he was all right. 

Our own bed where we spread our blanketfi 
was excellent in one respect, — there was no 
danger of tumbling cut of it. At first the rain 
pattered gently on the leaves overhead, and we 
congratulated ourselves on the snugness of our 
situation. There was something cheerful about 
this free life. We contrasted our condition with 
that of tired invalids who were tossing on downj 
beds, and wooing sleep in vain. Nothing was sa 



WHAT SOME PEOPLE CALL PLEASURE. 189 

wholesome and invigorating as this bivouac la 
the forest. But, somehow, sleep did not come. 
The rain had ceased to patter, and began to fall 
mth a steady determination, a sort of soak, soak, 
all about us. In fact, it roared on the rubber 
blanket, and beat in our faces. The wind began 
to stir a Httle, and there was a moaning on high. 
Not contented with dripping, the rain was driven 
into our faces. Another suspicious circumstance 
was noticed. Little rills of water got established 
along the sides under the blankets, cold, undenia- 
ble streams, that interfered with drowsiness. 
Pools of water settled on the bed ; and the chap- 
lain had a habit of moving suddenly, and letting 
a quart or two inside, and down my neck. It 
began to be evident that we and our bed were 
probably the wettest objects in the woods. The 
rubber was an excellent catch-all. There was no 
trouble about ventilation, but we found that we 
had established our quarters without any provis- 
ion for drainage. There was not exactly a wUd 
tempest abroad ; but there was a degree of liveli- 
ness in the thrashing limbs and the creaking of 



190 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

the tree-branches which rubbed against each 
other, and the pouring rain increased in volume 
and power of penetration. Sleep was quite out 
of the question, with so much to distract our 
attention. In fine, our misery became so perfect 
that we both broke out into loud and sarcastic 
laughtci over the absurdity of our situation. We 
had subjected ourselves to all this forlornness 
simply for pleasure. Whether Old Phelps was 
still in existence, we couldn't tell : we could get 
no response from him. With da3'light, if he con- 
tinued ill and could not move, our situation 
would be little improved. Our supplies were 
gone^ we lay in a pond, a deluge of water was 
pouring down on us. This was summer recrea- 
tion. The whole thing was so excessivel}^ absurd 
tJiat we laughed again, louder than ever. We 
lad plent}^ of this sort of amusement. 

Suddenly through the night we heard a sort of 
veply that siaited us bolt upright. This was a 
prolonged squawk. It was like the voice of no 
beast or bird with which we were famihar. At 
^st it was distant ; but it rapidly approached 



WHAT SOME PEOPLE CALL PLEASURE. 191 

tearing through the night and apparently through 
the tree-tops, like the harsh cry of a web-footed 
bird with a snarl in it ; in fact, as I said, a 
squawk. It came close to us, and then turned, 
and as rapidly as it came fled away through the 
forest, and we lost the unearthly noise far up the 
mountain- slope. 

" What was tJiat, Phelps? " we cried out. But 
no response came ; and we wondered if his spirit 
had been rent away, or if some evil genius had 
sought it, and then, bajffled by his serene and phil- 
osophic spirit, had shot off into the void in rage 
and disappointment. 

The night had no other adventure. The moon 
at length coming up behind the clouds lent a 
spectral aspect to the forest, and deceived us for 
a time into the notion that day was at hand ; but 
the rain never ceased, and we lay wishful and 
fvaiting, with no item of solid misery wanting 
that we could conceive. 

Day was slow a-coming, and didn't amount to 
much when it came, so heavy were the clouds ; 
but the rain slg/^k^ned. We crawled out of oui 



192 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

water-cure "pack," and sought the guide. To 
our infinite relief he announced himself not onl;^ 
alive, but in a going condition. I looked at my 
watch. It had stopped at five o'clock. I poured 
the water out of it, and shook it ; but, not being 
constructed on the hydrauUc principle, it refused 
to go. Some hours later we encountered a hunts- 
man, from whom I procured some gun-grease, 
witli this I filled the watch, and heated it in by 
the fire. This is a most effectual waj' of treating 
a delicate Genevan timepiece. 

The light disclosed fully the suspected fact 
that our bed had been made in a shght depres- 
sion : the under rubber blanket spread m this 
had prevented the rain from soaking into the 
ground, and we had been Ipng in what was in 
fact a well -contrived bath-tub. While Old Phelps 
was pulhng himself together, and we were wring- 
ing some gallons of water out of our blankets, we 
questioned the old man about the " squawk," 
and what bird was possessed of such a voice 
It was not a bird at all, he said, but a cat, the 
black-cat of the woods, larger than the domestifi 



WHAT SOME PEOPLE CALL PLEASURE. 193 

mimal, and an ugly custoner, who is fond of fish, 
ftnd carries a pelt that is worth two or three dol- 
lars in the market. Occasionally he blunders into 
a sable-trap ; and he is altogether hateful in his 
ways, and has the most uncultivated voice that is 
heard in the woods. We shall remember him as 
one of the least pleasant phantoms of that cheer- 
ful night when we lay in the storm, fearing any 
moment the advent to one of us of the grimmest 
messenger. 

We rolled up and shouldered our wet belong- 
ings, and, before the shades had j^et lifted from 
the saturated bushes, pursued our march. It 
was a relief to be again in motion, although our 
progress was slow, and it was a question every 
rod whether the guide could go on. We had the 
day before us ; but if we did not find a boat at 
the inlet a day might not suffice, in the weak con- 
dition of the guide, to extricate us from our 
rid: culous position. There was nothing heroic in 
it ; we had no object : it was merel}', as it must 
appear by this time, a pleasure-excursion, and we 
aiight be lost or perish in it without reward and 



194 IN THE WILDERNESS. 

with little sjTiipatliy. We had something like an 
hour and a half of stumbling through the swamp, 
when suddenly we stood in the little trail ! Slight 
as it was, it appeared to us a very Broadway to 
Paradise, if broad ways ever lead thither. Phelps 
haUed it, and sank down in it like one reprieved 
from death. But the boat? Lea-sdng him, we 
quickly ran a quarter of a mile down to the inlet. 
The boat was there. Our shout to the guide 
would have roused him out of a death-slumber. 
He came down the trail with the agility of an 
aged deer : never was so glad a sound in his ear, 
he said, as that shout. It was in a very jubilant 
mood that we emptied the boat of water, pushed 
off, shipped the clumsy oars, and bent to the two- 
mile row through the black waters of the wind- 
ing, desolate channel, and over the lake, whose 
dark waves were tossed a httle in the morning 
breeze. The trunks of dead trees stand about 
this lake, and .all its shores are ragged with 
|.hastly drift-wood ; but it was open to the sky 
Biid although the heavy clouds still obscured al 
ttie mountain-ranges we had a sense of escapt 



WHAT SOME PEOPLE CALL PLEASURE. 195 

and freedom that almost made the melancholy 
Bcene lovely. 

How lightly past hardship sits upon us ! All 
fche misery of the night vanished, as if it had not 
been, in the shelter of the log cabin at Mud 
Pond, with dry clothes that fitted us as the skin 
of the bear fits him in the spring, a noble break- 
fast, a toasting fire, solicitude about our comfort, 
judicious sympathy with our suffering, and will* 
mgness to hear the now growing tale of our 
adventure. Then came, in a day of absolute 
idleness, while the showers came and went, and 
the mountains appeared and disappeared in sun 
and storm, that perfect physical enjoyment which 
consists in a feeling of strength without any 
inclination to use it, and in a delicious languor 
i^hich is too enjoyable to be surrendered to sleeps 




HOW SPRING CAME IN NEW ENGLAND. 



HOW SPEING CAME IN NEW ENGLAND. 



BY A READER OF "'93." 




EW ENGLAND is the battle-ground of 
the seasons. It is La Vendee. To 
conquer it is only to begin the fight. 
When it is completely subdued, what kind of 
weather have you? None whatever. 

What is this New England ? A country ? No : 
a camp. It is alternately invaded by the hyper- 
borean legions and by the wilting sirens of the 
tropics. Icicles hang always on its northern 
heights ; its seacoasts are fringed with mosquitoes. 
There is for a third of the year a contest between 
the icy air of the pole and the warm wind of the 
gulf. The result of this is a compromise: the 

199 



200 HOW SPRING CAME IN NEW ENGLAND, 

compromise is called Thaw. It is the norma. 
condition in New England. The New-Englander 
is a person who is always just about to be warm 
and comfortable. This is the stuff of which 
heroes and mart^Ts are made. A person thor- 
oughlj^ heated or frozen is good for nothing. 
Look at the Bongos. Examine (on the map) the 
Dog-Rib nation. The New-Englander, by in- 
cessant activity, hopes to get warm. Edwards 
made his theology. Thank God, New England 
is not in Paris ! 

Hudson's Ba}^, Labrador, Grinnell's Land, a 
whole zone of ice and walruses, make it un- 
pleasant for New England. This icy cover, like 
the hd of a pot, is alwaj^s suspended over it : 
when it shuts down, that is winter. This wouk 
be intolerable, were it not for the Gulf Stream. 
The Gulf Stream is a benign, liquid force, flow- 
ing from under the ribs of the equator, — a white 
knight of the South going up to battle the giant 
of the Nortli. The two meet in New England 
and have it out there. 

This is the theory; but, in fact, the Gulf 



BOW SPRING CAME IN NEW ENGLAND. 201 

Stream is mostly a delusion as to New England. 
For Ireland it is quite another thing. Potatoes 
ripen in Ireland before they are j)lanted in New 
England. That is the reason the Irish emigrate : 
they desire two crops the same year. The Gulf 
Stream gets shunted off from New England by 
the formation of the coast below : besides, it is 
too shallow to be of any service. Icebergs float 
down against its surface-current, and fill all the 
New-England air with the chill of death till 
June : after that the fogs drift down from New- 
foundland. There never was such a mockery as 
this Gulf Stream. It is like the English influ- 
ence on France, on Europe. Pitt was an ice- 
berg. 

Still New England survives. To what pur- 
pose? I say, as an example: the politician 
says, to produce "Poor Boys." Bah! The poor 
boy is an anachronism in civilization. He is no 
longer poor, and he is not a boy. In Tartary 
they would hang him for sucking all the asses' 
milk that belongs to the children : in New Eng 
land he has all the cream from the Public Cow 



202 HOW SPRiyQ CAME IN NEW ENGLAND, 

VVTiat can you expect in a country where one 
knows not to-day what the weather will be to- 
morrow? Climate makes the man. Suppose he, 
too, dwells on the Channel Islands, where he haa 
all climates, and is superior to all. Perhaps he 
will become the prophet, the seer, of his age, as 
he is its Poet. The New-Englander is the man 
without a climate. Why is his country recog- 
nized? You won't find it on an}^ map of Paris. 

And 3'et Pans is the universe. Strange anom- 
oly ! The greater must include the less ; but 
how if the less leaks out ? This sometimes hap- 
pens. 

And 3'et there are phenomena in that country 
worth observing. One of them is the conduct of 
Nature from the 1st of March to the 1st of June, 
or, as some say, from the vernal equinox to the 
summer solstice. As Tourmalain remarked, 
" You'd better observe the unpleasant than to 
be blind." This was in 802. Tomrnalain ia 
dead; so is Gross Alain; so is little Pee -Wee: 
we shall all be dead before things get anj 
better. 



HOW SPRING CAME IN NEW ENGLAND. 203 

That is the law. Without revolution there is 
nothing. What is revolution? It is turning 
Bociety over, and putting the best underground 
for a fertilizer. Thus only will things grow. 
What has this to do with New England? In the 
language of that flash of social hghtning, Beran- 
ger, " May the Devil fly away with me if I can 

Let us speak of the period in the year in New 
England when winter appears to hesitate. Ex- 
cept in the calendar, the action is ironical ; but it 
is stiU deceptive. The sun mounts high : it is 
above the horizon twelve hours at a time. The 
c>now gradually sneaks away in liquid repentance. 
One morning it is gone, except in shaded spots 
and close by the fences. From about the trunlis 
of the trees it has long departed : the tree is a 
living thing, and its growth repels it. The fence 
Is dead, driven into the earth in a rigid hue by 
man: the fence, in short, is dogma; icy pieju- 
jlice lingers near it. 

The snow has disappeared ; but the landscape 
^ a ghastly sight, — bleached, dead. The treej 



e04 HOW SPRING CAME IN NEW ENGLAND. 

Bre stakes ; the grass is of no color ; and the 
bare soil is not brown with a healthful brown i 
life has gone out of it. Take up a piece of turf: 
it is a clod, without warmth, inanimate. Pull it 
in pieces : there is no hope in it : it is a part of 
the past ; it is the refuse of last j^ear. This is 
the condition to which winter has reduced the 
landscape. When the snow, which was a pall, 
is removed, you see how ghastl}^ it is. The face 
of the country is sodden. It needs now onlj^ the 
south wind to sweep over it, fuU of the damp 
breath of death ; and that begins to blow. No 
prospect would be more dreary. 

And yet the south wind fills credulous man 
with joy. He opens the window. He goes out, 
and catches cold. He is stirred b}^ the mysteri- 
ous coming of something. K there is sign of 
change nowhere else, we detect it in the news- 
paper. In sheltered corners of that truculent 
instiiiment for the diffusion of the prejudices of 
the few among the many begin to grow the 
violets of tender sentiment, the early greens of 
reaming. The poet feels the sap of the ne^ 



BOW SPRIXG CAME m NEW ENGLAND. 205 

year before the marsh- willow. He blossoms in 
Edvance of the catkins. Man is greater than 
Nature. The poet is greater than man: he ia 
nature on two legs, — ambulatory. 

At first there is no appearance of conflict. 
The winter garrison seems to have withdrawn. 
The invading hosts of the South are entering 
without opposition. The hard ground softens ; 
the sun hes warm upon the southern bank, and 
water oozes from its base. If jou examine the 
buds of the lilac and the flowering shrubs, you 
cannot say that they are swelling ; but the var- 
nish with whicn they were coated in the fall to 
keep out the frost seems to be cracking. If 
the sugar-maple is hacked, it wiU bleed, — the 
pure white blood of Nature. 

At the close of a sunny day the western sky 
has a softened aspect: its color, we say, has 
wai-mth in it. On such a day you may meet a 
caterpillar on the footpath, and turn out for him. 
The house-fly thaws out ; a company of cheerful 
w^asps take possession of a chamber-window. It 
vS oppressive indoors at night, and the windon* 



206 EOW SPRING CAME IN NEW ENOLANI). 

is raised. A flock of millers, born out of time, 

flutter in. It is most unusual weather for the 
season : it Is so every j'ear. The delusion la 
complete, when, on a mild evening, the tree- 
toads open their brittle-brattle chorus on the edge 
of the pond. The citizen asks his neighbor, 
*'Did 3^ou hear the frogs last night?" That 
seems to open the new world. One thinlis of his 
childhood and its innocence, and of his first loves. 
It fills one with sentiment and a tender longing, 
this voice of the tree-toad. Man is a strange 
being. Deaf to the prayers of friends, to the 
sermons and warnings of the church, to the calls 
of duty, to the pleadings of his better natm-e, he 
is touched by the tree-toad. The signs of the 
spring multiply. The passer in the street in 
the evening sees the maid-servant leaning on the 
arca-gai':e in sweet converse with some one lean- 
mg on the other side ; or in the park, which is 
stiL too damp for any thing but true ajffection, he 
sees her seated by the side of one wno is able to 
piotect her from the pohceman, and hears hei 
sigh, " How sweet it is to be with tliose we love 
to be with ! '' 



now SPRING CAME IN NEW ENGLAND, 207 

All this is very well; but next morning the 
newspaper nips these early buds of sentiment. 
The telegraph announces, " Twenty feet of snow 
at Ogden, on the Pacific Road ; winds blowing a 
gale at Omaha, and snow still falling ; mercury 
frozen at Duluth ; storm-signals at Port Huron.' ' 

Where now are j^our tree-toads, your young 
love, your early season? Before noon it rains; 
by three o'clock it hails ; before night the bleak 
storm-cloud of the north-west envelops the sky ; 
a gale is raging, whMing about a tempest of 
snow. By morning the snow is drifted in banlis, 
and two feet deep on a level. Early in the seven- 
teenth century, Drebbel of Holland invented tlio 
weather-glass. Before that, men had suffered 
without knowing the degree of their suffering. 
A century later, Romer hit upon the idea of 
using mercury in a thermometer ; and Fahi'enheit 
instructed the instrument which adds a new 
because distinct terror to the weather. Science 
names and registers tht ills of life ; and yet it ia 
ft gain to know the names and habits of our ene* 
mies. It is with some satisfaction in our knowl- 
edge that we say the thermometer marks zero. 



208 HOW SPRING CAME IN NEW ENGLAND, 

In fact, the wild beast called Winter, untameti 
has returned, and taken possession, of New Eng 
land. Nature, giving up her melting mood, has 
retired into dumbness and white stagnation. But 
we are wise. We say it is better to have it now 
than later. We have a conceit of understanding 
things. 

Extraordinary blindness ! 

The sun is in alliance with the earth. Between 
tne two the snow is uncomfortable. Compelled 
to go, it decides to go suddenl}^ The first day 
there is slush with rain ; the second da}', mud 
with hail ; the third day, a flood with sunshine. 
The thermometer declares that the temperature is 
delightful. Man shivers and sneezes. His neigh- 
bor dies of some disease newly named by science ; 
but he dies aU the same as if it hadn't been newly 
named. Science has not discovered any name 
that is not fatal. 

This is called the breaking-up of winter. 

Nature seems for some da3's to be in doubt, 
not exactly able to stand still, not daring to pu 
foiiJi an}' thing tender. Man says that the worsi 



HOW SPBmO CAME IN NEW ENGLAND. 209 

Is over. If he should live a thousand years, he 
would be deceived every year. And this is called 
an age of scepticism. Man never believed in so 
many things as now : he never believed so much 
in himself. As to Nature, he knows her secrets : 
he can predict what she will do. He communi- 
cates with the next world by means of an alpha- 
bet which he has invented. He tallvs with souls 
at the other end of the spirit-wire. To be sure, 
neither of them says any thing ; but they talk. 
Is not that something ? He suspends the law of 
gravitation as to his own body — he has learned 
how to evade it — as tjTants suspend the legal 
writs of habeas corpus. When Gravitation asks 
for his body, she cannot have it. He sa3's of 
himself, "lam infalhble ; I am subhme." He 
believes aU these things. He is master of the 
elements. Shakspeare sends him a poem just 
made, and as good a poem as the man could 
mite himself. And yet this man — he goes out 
Df doors without his overcoat, catches cold, an(? 
18 bui-ied in three lays. ' • On the 21 st of Janu- 
tiy,'* exclaimed Mercier, " all kings felt for the 



210 HOW SPRING CAME IN NEW ENGLAND. 

backs of their necks.*' This might be said of 
all men in New England in the spring. This is 
the season that all the poets celebrate. Let us 
sappose that once, in Thessal}', there was a genial 
Bpring, and there was a poet who sang of it. All 
later poets have sung the same song. " Voila 
tout! " That is the root of poetrj-. 

Another delusion. We hear toward evening, 
high in air, the "conk'* of the wild-geese. 
Looking up, jou see the black specks of that 
adventui'ous triangle, winging along in rapid 
flight northward. Perhaps it takes a wide re- 
turning sweep, in doubt ; but it disappears in the 
north. There is no mistaking that sign. This 
unmusical " conli " is sweeter than the " ker- 
chunli ' ' of the bull-frog. Probably these bu'ds 
ai'e not idiots, and probably they turned back 
south again after spjing out the nakedness of 
the land ; but they have made their sign. Nest 
day there is a rumor that somebody has seen a 
blue-bird. This rumor, unhappily for the bud 
(which will freeze to death) , is confirmed. Ir 
jBss than thi'ee days everybody has seen a blue» 



HOW spri:n'g came in new England. 211 

bii'd ; and favored people have heard a robin, or. 
rather the 3^ellow-breasted thrush, misnamed a 
robin in America. This is no doubt true : for 
angle-worms have been seen on the surface of the 
g:ound ; and, wherever there is any thing to eat, 
Uie. robin is promptly on hand. About this time 
you notice, in i^rotected, sunny spots, that the 
grass has a little color. But you say that it is 
the grass of last fall. It is very difficult to tell 
when the grass of last fall became the grass of 
this spring. It looks " warmed over." The 
green is rusty. The lilac-buds have certainly 
swollen a little, and so have those of the soft 
maple. In the rain the grass does not brighten 
as you think it ought to, and it is only when the 
lain turns to snow that 3'ou see any decided gi'een 
color by contrast with the white. The snow 
gradually covers every thing very quietty, how- 
ever. Winter comes back without the least noise 
or bustle, tireless, malicious, implacable. Neither 
party in the fight now makes much fuss over it ; 
and you might think that Natui-e had surrendere(' 
iitogether, if you did not find about this time 



212 HOW SPRING CAME IN NEW ENGL ANT 

m the woods, on the edge of a snow-bank, tba 
modest blossoms of the trailing arbutus, shedding 
their delicious perfume. The bravest are alwa^^s 
the tenderest, says the poet. The season, in its 
blind way, is trjing to express itself. 

And it is assisted. There is a cheerful chatter 
In the trees. The blackbirds have come, and in 
numbers, households of them, i-illages of them, 
— communes, rather. They do not beheve in 
God, these blackbirds. They think they can 
take care of themselves. We shall see. Bat 
they are well informed. They arrived just as the 
last snow-bank melted. One cannot say now 
that there is not greenness in the grass ; not in 
the wide fields, to be sure, but on lawns and 
banks sloping south. The dark-spotted leaves 
of the dog-tooth \i6[&t begin to show. Even 
Fahrenheit's contrivance joins in the upward 
movement: the mercury has suddenly gODC up 
from thirty degrees to sixty-five degrees. It ia 
time for the ice-man. Ice has no sooner disap- 
peared than we desu'e it. 

There is a smile, if one may say so, in tlif 



HOW SPRING CAME IN NEW ENGLAND. 213 

Miie sky, and there is softness in the south wind. 
The song- sparrow is singing in the apple-tree. 
Another bu'd-note is heard, — two long, musical 
whistles, liquid but metallic. A brown bu'd this 
one, darker than the song-sparrow, and without 
the latter 's hght stripes, and smaller, yet bigger 
than the queer little chipping-bu'd. He wants a 
familiar name, this sweet singer, who appears to 
be a sort of sparrow. He is such a contrast to 
the blue-jays, who have arrived in a passion, 
as usual, screaming and scolding, the elegant, 
spoiled beauties ! They wrangle from morning 
till night, these beautiful, high-tempered aristo- 
crats. 

Encouraged by the birds, by the bursting of 
the lilac-buds, by the peeping-up of the crocuses, 
by tradition, b}^ the sweet flutterings of a double 
hope, another sign appears. This is the Easter 
oonnets, most delightful flowers of the j^ear, 
smblems of innocence, hope, devotion. Alaa 
that they have to be worn under umbrellas, so 
aiuch thought, freshness, feehng, tenderness, 
nave gone into them! And a north-east storm 



814 HOW SFEING CAME IN NEW ENGLAND. 

of rain, accompanied with haU, comes to crown 
all these virtues with that of self-sacrifice. The 
frail hat is offered up to the implacable season. 
In fact, Nature is not to be forestalled nor hur- 
ried in this way. Things cannot be pushed. 
Nature hesitates. The woman who does not 
hesitate in April is lost. The appearance of the 
bonnets is premature. The blackbirds see it. 
They assemble. For two daj^s they hold a noisy 
convention, with high debate, in the tree-tops 
Something is going to happen. 

Say, rather, the usual thing is about to occui . 
There is a wind called Auster, another called 
Eurus, another called Septentrio, another Me- 
ridies, besides Aquilo, Vulturnus, Africus. 
There are the eight great winds of the classical 
dictionary, — arsenal of mystery and terror and 
of the unknown, — besides the wind Eui'oaquilo 
of St. Luke. This is the wind that drives an 
apostle wishing to gain Crete upon the African 
Syrtis. If St. Luke had been tacking to get to 
Hyannis, this wind would have forced him into 
Holmes's Hole. The Euroaquilo is no respecter 
of persons. 



HOW SPRING CAME IN NEW ENGLAND. 215 

These winds, and others unnamed and more 
terrible, ch'cle about New England. They form 
a ring about it : they he in wait on its borders, 
but only to si:)ring upon it and harry it. The}' 
follow each other in contracting circles, in whirl- 
winds, in maelstroms of the atmosphere : they 
meet and cross each other, all at a moment. 
This New England is set apart : it is the exer- 
cise-ground of the weather. Storms bred else- 
where come here full - gi'own : the}^ come in 
couples, in quartets, in choruses. If New Eng- 
land were not mostly rock, these winds would 
carry it off; but they would bring it all back 
again, as happens with the sandy portions. What 
sharp Eurus carries to Jersey, Africus ])ring3 
back. When the air is not full of snow, it is full 
of dust. This is called one of the compensations 
of Nature. 

This is what happened after the convention of 
the blackbirds : A moaning south wind brought 
rain ; a south-west wind tm-ned the rain to snow ; 
what is called a zephyr, out of the west, drifted 
the snow; a north wind sfnt the mercury far 



216 HOW SPUmG CAME IN NEW ENGLAND. 

below freezing. Salt added to snow increases 
the evaporation and the cold. This was the 
oflice of the north-east wind : it made the snoTV 
damp, and increased its bulk ; but then it rained 
a little, and froze, thawing at the same tine. 
The air was full of fog and snow and rain. 
And then the wind changed, went back round 
the cu'cle, reversing every thing, like dragging a 
cat by its tail. The mercur}^ approached zero. 
This was nothing uncommon. We know all these 
winds. We are famihar with the different "forms 
of water." 

All this was onty the prologue, the overture. 
If one might be permitted to speak scientifically, 
it was only the tuning of the instruments. The 
opera was to come, — the Flying Dutchman of 
the air. 

There is a wind called Euroclydon : it would 
be one of the Eumenides ; only they are women. 
It is ha'f-brother to the gigantic storm-wind of 
the equinox. The Euroclydon is not a wind : it 
is a monster. Its breath is frost. It has sno^ 
in its hair. It is something terrible. It peddles 
rheumatism, and plants consumption. 



HOW SPRING CAME IN NEW ENGLAND 211 

The EurocljTlon knew just the moment to strike 
into the discord of the weather in New England. 
From its lair about Point Desolation, from the 
glaciers of the Greenland continent, sweexylng 
round the coast, leaving wi'ecks in its track, it 
marched right athwart the other conflicting 
winds, churning them into a fury, and inaugurat- 
ing chaos. It was the Marat of the elements. 
It was the revolution marching into the ' ' dreaded 
wood of La Sandraie." 

Let us sum it all up in one word : it was some- 
thing for which there is no name. 

Its track was destruction. On the sea it leaves 
wrecks. What does it leave on land ? Funerals. 
When it subsides. New England is prostrate. It 
has left its legacy: this legacy is coughs and 
patent medicines. This is an epic ; this is des- 
tiny. You think Providence is expelled out of 
New England ? Listen ! 

Two days after Euroctydon, I found in the 
i^oods the hepatica — earliest of wild wood flowers, 
evidently not intimidated by the wild work of the 
trmies trampling over New England — daring to 



218 HOW SPRING CAME IN NEW ENGLAND. 

hold up its tender blossom. One could not but 
admire the quiet pertinacity of Nature. She had 
been painting the grass under the snow. In 
spots it was ^-ivid green. There was a mild rain, 
— mild, but chilly. The clouds gathered, a.d 
broke away in hght, fleec}^ masses. There was 
a softness on the hills. The birds suddenly 
were on every tree, glancing through the air, 
filling it with song, sometimes shaking rain-drops 
from their wings. The cat brings in one in his 
mouth. He thinks the season* has begun, and 
the game-laws are off. He is fond of Nature, 
this cat, as we all are : he wants to possess it. 
At four o'clock in the morning there is a gi*and 
dress-rehearsal of the birds. Not all the pieces 
of the orchestra have arrived ; but there are 
enough. The gi-ass-sparrow has come. This is 
certainly charming. The gardener comes to talk 
fibout seeds : he uncovers the strawberries and 
the grape-vines, salts the asparagus-bed, and 
plants the peas. You ask if he planted them 
with a shot-gun. In the shade there is stUl frost 
in the gix)und. Nature, in fact, stiU hesitates, 



HOW SPRING CAME IN NEW ENGLAND. 219 

puts forth one hepatica at a time, and waits to 
see the result ; pushes up the grass slowl}^ per- 
haps draws it in at night. 

This indecision we call Spring. 

It becomes painful. It is lilie being on the 
rack for ninetj^ days, expecting every day a re- 
prieve. Men grow hardened to it, however. 

This is the order with man, — hope, surprise, 
bewilderment, disgust, facetiousness. The peo- 
ple in New England finally become facetious 
about spring. This is the last stage : it is the 
most dangerous. When a man has come to make 
a jest of misfortune, he is lost. "It bores me 
to die," said the jom-nalist Carra to the heads- 
man at the foot of the guillotine : " I would like 
to have seen the continuation." One is also 
interested to see how spring is going to turn out. 

A day of sun, of delusive bird-singing, sight 
of the mellow earth, — all these begin to beget 
lonfidence. The night, even, has been warm. 
JiJut what is this in the morning journal at breals:- 
fast? — " An area of low pressure is moving from 
the Tortugas north.'' You shudder. 



220 HOW SPRING CAME IN NEW ENGLAND. 

What is this Low Pressure itself, — it? It is 
something frightful, low, crouching, creeping, 
advancing ; it is a foreboding ; it is misfortune 
by telegi'aph ; it is the " '93 '* of the atmosphere. 

This low pressure is a creation of Old Prob. 
What is that? Old Prob. is the new deit}^ of the 
Americans, greater than -^olus, more despotic 
than Sans-Culotte. The wind is his servitor, the 
lightning his messenger. He is a mystery made 
of six parts electricity, and one part "guess." 
This deity is worshipped b}^ the Americans ; his 
name is on every man's lips first in the morning ; 
he is the Frankenstein of modern science. 
Housed at Wasliington, his business is to direct 
the stoiTQS of the whole country upon New Eng- 
land, and to give notice in advance. This he 
does. Sometimes he sends the storm, and then 
gives notice. This is mere playfulness on his 
part : it is all one to him. His great power is ir 
the low pressure. 

On the Bexar plains of Texas, among the hilla 
vf the Presidio, along the Rio Grande, low press- 
ore is bred ; it is nursed also in the AtcJiafalayt 



now spumo came ay new England. 221 

Bwamps of Louisiana ; it moves by the way of 
Thibodeaux and Bonnet Carre. The south- wiest 
•*«* a magazine of atmosj)heric disasters. Lou? 
pressure ma} be no worse than the others : it is 
better known, and is most used to inspire terror. 
It can be summoned any time also from the 
everglades of Florida, from the morasses of the 
Okeechobee. 

When the New-Englander sees this in his 
newspaper, he knows what it means. He has 
twenty-four hours' warning ; but what can he 
do ? Nothing but watch its certain advance by 
telegraph. He suffers in anticipation. That is 
what Old Prob. has brought about, — suffering 
by anticipation. This low pressure advances 
against the wind. The wind is from the north- 
east. Nothing could be more unpleasant than a 
north-east wind ? Wait till low pressure joins it. 
Together they make spring in New England. 
A north-east storm from the south-west ! — there 
»s no bitterer satire than this. It lasts three 
flays. After that the weather changes into some- 
tn ng winter-like. 



222 HOW SPRING CAME IN NEW ENGLAND. 

A solitar}^ song-sparrow, without a note of joy, 
hops along the snow to the dining-room Tvindow, 
and, turning his httle head aside, looks up. He 
IS hungrj' and cold. Little Minnette, clasping 
her hands behind he.'- back, stands and looks at 
him, and saj's, ^'Po' birdie!'* Thej^ appear to 
understand each other. The sparrow gets his 
crumbs ; but he knows too much to let Minnette 
get hold of him. Neither of these little things 
could take care of itself in a New-England spring 
— not in the depths of it. This is what the 
father of Minnette, looking out of the window 
upon the wide waste of snow, and the evergreens 
bent to the ground with the weight of it, says, 
"It looks like the depths of spring." To this 
has man come : to his facetiousness has succeeded 
sarcasm. It is the first of May. 

Then follows a da}^ of bright sun and blue sky. 
The bu'ds open the morning with a lively chorus. 
In spite of Auster, EurocMon, low pressai*e 
and the government bureau, things have gone 
forward. By the roadside, where the snow has 
JQst melted, the grass is of the color of enjorald, 



HOW SPRING CAME IN NEW ENGLAND. 223 

The heart leaps to see it. On the lawn there are 
twenty robins, lively, noisy, worm-seeking. Theii 
yellow breasts contrast with the tender green of 
the newly-springing clover and herd's-grass. If 
they would only stand still, we might thisk the 
dandelions had blossomed. On an evergreen- 
bough, looking at them, sits a graceful bird, 
whose back is bluer than the sky. There is a red 
tint on the tips of the boughs of the hard maple. 
With Nature, color is life. See, already, green, 
yellow, blue, red ! In a few days — is it not so? 
— through the green masses of the trees will 
flash the orange of the oriole, the scarlet of the 
tanager ; perhaps to-morrow. 

But, in fact, the next day opens a little sourly. 
It is almost clear overhead: but the clouds 
thicken on the horizon ; they look leaden ; they 
threaten rain. It certainly will rain: the air 
feels like rain, or snow. By noon it begins to 
Bnow, and ^ou hear the desolate cry of the 
phoebe-bird. It is a fine snow, gentle at first ; 
but it soon drives in swerving hues, for the wind 
18 from the south-west, from the west, from the 



224 now SPUING CAME IN NEW ENGLAND 

north-east, from the zenith (one of the ordinary 
winds of New England), from all points of the 
compass. The fine snow becomes rain ; it be- 
comes large snow ; it melts as it falls ; it freezes 
as it falls. At last a storm sets in, and night 
shuts down upon the bleak scene. 

During the night there is a change. It thun- 
ders' and lightens. Toward morning there is a 
brilliant display of aurora boreahs. TMs is a 
sign of colder weather. 

The gardener is in despair ; so is the sports- 
man. The trout take no pleasure in biting in 
such weather. Paragraphs appear in the news- 
papers, copied from the paper of last year, say- 
ing that this is the most severe spring in thirty 
years. Every one, in fact, believes that it is, 
and also that next year the spring will be early. 
Man is the most guUible of creatures. 

And with reason : he trusts his eyes, and not 
his instinct. Diuing this most sour weather of 
the year, the anemone blossoms ; and, almost 
immediately after, the fairy petcil. the spring 
beauty, the dog-tooth violet, and the true violet 



HOW SPRING CAME IN NEW ENGLAND. 225 

£n clouds and fog, and rain and snow, and all 
discouragement, Nature pushes on her forces 
with progressive haste and rapidity. Before one 
is aware, all the lawns and meadows are deeply 
green, the trees are opening their tender leaves. 
In a burst of sunshine the cherry-trees are white, 
the Judas-tree is pink, the hawthorns give a 
sweet smell. The air is full of sweetness ; the 
world, of color. 

In the midst of a chilling ncoth-east storm the 
ground is strewed with the white-and-pink blos- 
soms from the apple-trees. The next day the 
mercury stands at eighty degrees. Summer has 
come. 

There was no Spring. 

The winter is over. You think so? Robes- 
pierre thought the Revolution was over in the 
beginning of his last Thermidor. He lost hm 
head after that. 

When the first buds are set, and the com is 
up, and the cucumbers have four leaves, a mali- 
cious frost steals down from the north and kills 
them in a night. 



226 HOW SPRING CAME IN NEW ENGLAND. 

That is the last effort of spring. The mercury 
then mounts to ninet}' degrees. The season has 
been long, but, on the whole, successful. Many 
people sur\ive it. 




JUN 4 1904 



BRENTANO'S I 



